YouTube TV Struggles with Freezes During Consecutive NBA Conference Finals Games; Is Service Ready for Sunday Ticket?
YouTube TV is having a week, and not in a good way. On Thursday, for the second night in a row, users of the service complained that they had trouble getting the NBA Conference Finals game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets to stream properly. Freezes, buffering issues and that frustrating, spinning loading circle plagued viewers from coast to coast.
If it was the first time this week that YouTube TV had had difficulties, it could perhaps be explained away or forgotten. But the same issues plagued Wednesday’s game between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, and escalated to the point that the company had to issue a statement on Twitter noting that it was aware of the issues, and trying to fix them.
Such technical issues may seem unforgiveable to fans in the moment who have been denied the ability to watch their favorite team in a highly consequential game. But they are more or less standard problems for a new live TV streaming service that has to deal with a large scale of users trying to watch the same event at the same time. The trouble for YouTube TV is, it can’t reasonably claim to be a new live TV streaming service anymore.
The service has a limited, and shrinking amount of time to fix its issues, as well. Starting this fall, YouTube TV will become the host of NFL Sunday Ticket, the league’s popular out-of-market games service. Considering NFL games are usually the biggest sports draw in the United States, it would behoove YouTube TV to solve whatever issues it is seeing during the NBA Conference Finals quickly.
YouTube TV’s margin for error with Sunday Ticket is not that large to begin with. YouTube’s parent company Alphabet Inc. is paying $2 billion per season for the rights to Sunday ticket, and to simply break even on the deal YouTube TV must attract 4.5 million users to the package, according to market analysts. YouTube TV has around 6.3 million users in total, and though it is also offering Sunday Ticket to non-YouTube TV subscribers, it will certainly struggle to hit the 4.5 million user-goal if it cannot reliably stream games.
Indeed, YouTube has several questions to answer from a technical standpoint before it’s ready to roll with Sunday Ticket. Latency, or the delay between action happening in real time on the field and when users see it on their television screens, was a big issue for YouTube TV when streaming NFL games last season. The average latency time for a game on the service was more than 54 seconds, which is an eternity for viewers who tuned into a game expecting to see the action live, especially in an age where social media explodes with reactions to big plays as soon as they happen.
These loading issues and latency problems are likely to be exasperated by YouTube TV’s multiview function. Company executives have confirmed Sunday Ticket will offer fans the ability to watch up to four games at once, and has trotted out the feature for multiple events this spring, including the NCAA March Madness Tournament and the NFL Draft. But considering how many users will flock to the service to watch NFL Sunday Ticket at the same time, allowing them all to watch multiple games may well worsen any buffering or freezing issues users experience.
YouTube TV is not the only service that has had a high profile slip-up when it comes to live streaming recently. Netflix also experienced technical issues when it tried to stream the “Love is Blind” Season 4 reunion special live in April, causing delays of up to an hour for some fans. But YouTube is a live TV streaming platform; this is supposed to be what it does best, whether or not it is experiencing higher demand for a live sporting event. The service must iron out its issues soon, or face a full-on customer revolt if it fails to adequately stream NFL Sunday Ticket this fall.
YouTube TV
YouTube TV is a live TV streaming service with more than 60 channels for $72.99/month. This plan includes local channels, 32 of the top 35 cable channels, and regional sports networks (RSNs) in select markets. The service includes an unlimited DVR.