The Super Bowl broke streaming records… but with delays of up to 47 seconds

Phenix measured broadcast latency and found that “live streams” were between 28 and 47 seconds behind real time.

The Super Bowl of this year broke streaming records, with an increase of 20 percent more than in 2018. It should be noted that the real-time streaming solution of Phenix, measured the latency of the broadcast and discovered that the “live streams” were ebetween 28 and 47 seconds behind real time.

In addition to field-to-device delays, Phenix also measured latency between devices watching live streams in the same applications and found that devices had delays ranging from 69 to more than 100 seconds apart.

Jed Corenthal, CMO at Phenix (and formerly of the NFL), Jed Corenthal, notes that “the Super Bowl is the most-watched American sporting event of the year, and as sports viewing habits shift from linear to multi-device broadcast, it is important to understand the viewing experience of this growing demographic of ‘cord cutters.’ Phenix had a tester at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and we measured lag relative to the action on the field via cable and over-the-air and to various media platforms. streaming such as CBSSports.com, the CBS Sports app, Yahoo Sports and NFL.com. The results showed delays ranging from 28 to almost 47 seconds behind the real-time broadcast. Additionally, when comparing the delay time for different viewers watching on the same platform, they were shown to be extremely out of sync, with delays ranging from 69 seconds to more than 100 seconds away from each other.

“La latencia es exasperante para los fans, dejándoles que aprendan sobre los touchdowns de sus feeds de Twitter y las notificaciones de push antes de que vean la jugada en la pantalla. Aunque son frustrantes, no son inesperados: el 72% de los espectadores de deportes se anticipan a los problemas al transmitir los partidos. Va más allá de una simple molestia y causa un importante efecto dominó, dañando la reputación de las plataformas de streaming y afectando los ingresos cuando la gente no quiere pagar por suscripciones de bajo rendimiento a marcas que eligen retirarse y anunciarse en plataformas funcionales que tienen más ojos. Además, a medida que las apuestas legalizadas continúan arraigándose, cualquier cosa menos una experiencia de streaming en tiempo real es imposible cuando hay dinero en juego”.

"As we look at the media rights conversations that will take place over the next two years, the industry needs to redefine its standards for what is an acceptable live content viewing experience in order to successfully move forward. The Super Bowl LIII streaming results are just another point of proof that platforms cannot offer an optimal user experience for large-scale events and we need a technological overhaul to fix it," he concludes.