A live auction is a performance with a clock. Putting it online means the remote audience has to get the same sale as the room — not a delayed summary of it.
Equal footing
The hard requirement in a live online auction is that a bidder at home competes on the same terms as a bidder in the room. That is an engineering problem before it is a fairness principle: simultaneous and identical bids have to resolve deterministically, and the pace of the room has to survive the latency of a video stream.
The auctioneer's controls
The auctioneer can correct a bid, pause the sale, and move between lots without the online audience losing track. When the sale runs behind the published schedule, both the auctioneer and the bidders are notified — remote bidders are otherwise the first to be inconvenienced by a delay they cannot see.
Video
A near real-time stream carries the rostrum to remote bidders. What appears on screen during the sale — current lot, standing bid, bidder status — is configured with the auction house rather than fixed by us.
Phone bidding
Telephone bidders did not disappear when auctions went online. The platform carries a process for staff taking bids by phone during the live sale, alongside absentee bids left in advance.
Registration and approval
Live sales usually require bidders to be registered and approved before the event. Approval can be handled per bidder, or granted to a group by register role.