Netflix Crashes During NFL Games On Christmas Day, Fans Go Ballistic!
NFL fans did little to hide their frustration with Netflix after encountering technical problems while trying to watch the league’s slate of Christmas Day games.
On Wednesday, Netflix was set to host two AFC clashes – the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans vs. Baltimore Ravens – after the streaming giant paid $150 million for the rights to each NFL game. But early struggles to maintain the broadcast of the showdown between the back-to-back champions and the AFC North leaders was derided.
There were several glaring technical issues. Even before the first half ended at Acrisure Stadium, subscribers reported problems streaming the blockbuster matchup. Also, the Netflix score bug showed the Steelers with only two timeouts just as the game kicked off.
Meanwhile, during the pregame show, cameras panned to host Kay Adams for her introduction to the broadcast on late Wednesday morning – but microphones played welcome music instead of Adams’s opening monologue.
Taking to social media, droves of Netflix subscribers voiced their anger towards the media giant.
“I can’t even see the ball. Netflix can’t handle this. Pixelated garbage!!!,” one X user wrote, with another adding: “@netflix Fix your video quality! Call @amazon they can help you out with live streaming! Do better @NFL! #NetflixNFL”
A third chimed in, “Hey Netflix, I thought we said leave the streaming to Amazon Prime?!” A fourth added, “Deeply unhappy with Netflix. Disaster delay presenting NFL game Chiefs at Steelers. Netflix must exit that market.“
This isn’t the first time that Netflix users have complained about spotty streams of major sporting events. Back in November, the streaming service garnered backlash for a litany of technical issues that took place throughout the night of the highly-anticipated Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight .
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In the leadup to Christmas Day, the NFL reached out to Netflix in order to seek assurance that the technical issues present during Paul vs. Tyson wouldn’t resurface. “The NFL did check in with Netflix following the Tyson-Paul fight to ask about the problems and assess the likelihood that they could repeat themselves on Christmas,” ESPN’s Dan Graziano and Jeremy Fowler reported on November 20.
“Netflix said the fight reached 60 million homes, and apparently, part of the explanation to the league was that the unprecedented scale for them of broadcasting a live sporting event contributed to some of the challenges they faced.
“But the NFL came away from the conversations reassured that Netflix had figured out what went wrong and that it won’t be a problem for Chiefs-Steelers or Ravens-Texans on Dec. 25.”
Speaking to USA Today earlier this week, Netflix asserted that it had learned from the mistakes made on fight night last month. “We now know from experience what are the main pressure points in our infrastructure and are promptly addressing them ahead of the NFL games,” the streaming giant said.
“Some behaviors of our live streaming systems are impossible to replicate in a test and are only visible at huge scale with real viewers. We studied that in detail and are adjusting our content delivery, encoding, and streaming protocols accordingly.”
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