Teams Town Halls are in. Teams Live Events are out

Mary Jo Foley is the Editor in Chief at Directions on Microsoft. Before joining Directions, Mary Jo has worked as... more

On October 5, Microsoft is making a new virtual events experience known as Town Halls available in Teams for commercial customers. Teams Town Hall is replacing Teams Live Events, which will be discontinued fully by September 30, 2024.

Microsoft made the announcement about Town Hall replacing Live Events just a few days ago, on September 28, via a blog post. However, as Directions on Microsoft analyst Jim Gaynor noted in February this year, Microsoft already was moving away from hosting Live Events in Stream and Yammer in favor of Teams.

The move to Town Hall makes sense, Gaynor said. “Live Events were a Stream thing, Stream is no longer a service but a feature, and Live Events were already moving to Teams.”

Live Events are video broadcasts designed for simulcasting events like keynotes, announcements or all-hands addresses. They enable streaming of audio and video to audiences of up to 20,000 attendees (up to 100,000 when customers use Microsoft’s Live Events Assistance program).

Live Events were able to accommodate bigger audiences than Teams meetings and webinars, especially in the early days of Teams when meetings were limited to as few as 150 people, but this was accomplished by streaming the event video with interaction limited to text-based Q&A. Teams meetings are now able to accommodate up to 10,000 attendees. The Azure Media Services that support Live Events are being retired for customers in June 2024, squeezing Live Events out of the picture.

Some Town Halls features require Teams Premium

Town Halls in Teams are designed to host and deliver large-scale internal and external events. They feature advanced production capabilities and more attendee-engagement options. Town Halls in Office and Microsoft 365 will host up to 10,000 attendees (and up to 20,000 if an organization is using the $10 per user per month Teams Premium option). Events can last up to 30 hours and organizations can run up to 15 simultaneously hosted events across a tenant (and up to 50 concurrent events if using Teams Premium).

Town Halls supports RTMP-in and external encoders, enabling organizations to live-stream a custom RTMP source – similar to the current “Teams Encoder” capability in Teams Live Events. Using RTMP-out, customers can stream events out to a custom app or different endpoint outside Teams, allowing events to be viewed on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Meta Workplace and more.

As of launch this week, Town Halls will not have full feature parity with Teams Live Events, specifically around event roles, external presenter support, DVR support and Viva Engage integration. Some of this missing functionality should be available in the coming months.

This shift from Live Events to Town Halls feels rather sudden. Just a month ago, Microsoft was extolling the capabilities of Teams Live Events in a blog post focused on using Live Events to stream virtual events, playing up its functionality vs. Teams Meetings and Webinars. However, Microsoft’s ambitions to build up a digital-events business and presence have been building since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Town Halls may be just another step in that direction.