Update [10/16, 11:05 a.m. ET]: ESPN tells Awful Announcing it is aware of the problem, which is occurring on certain connected TV platforms, and is looking at ways to improve the user experience. On select Smart TVs, the ESPN app video player is designed to return buffering streams to the point of interruption, ensuring that viewers do not miss content due to latency issues. However, this behavior also applies to ad breaks. When the video player takes time to populate ads, or if there is buffering time between ads, this can cause users to return to live action late, which can accumulate over time.
Read our original story below:
Fans who have recently watched sporting events on the new ESPN app may have unknowingly run into an issue that is causing them to fall behind during live programming. At least, that’s a possibility being floated by the discerning eye of DJ Bean, host of the hockey podcast What Chaos! and on-air personality for NBC Sports Boston.
Bean theorized on a recent episode of What Chaos! that commercial breaks on the ESPN app are actually longer than the breaks on linear television. But instead of cutting back to live action in the middle of a commercial, the ESPN app is playing through its entire allotment of ads, then returning to the game as if the commercial break ended and the broadcast had just resumed. By the end of a game, this can cause a viewer to be minutes behind the live action.
“I believe ESPN+ is inserting ads that can be longer than the broadcast’s commercial breaks. This eventually makes viewers’ feeds no longer live, and they don’t know that unless they manually check,” Bean suggests.
He then goes on to document his experience watching a hockey game on the app. During the first period, his feed is live. But then, jump to the third period, after numerous ad breaks, Bean’s feed is no longer live, and he has to fast-forward through over a minute of game time to return to live action. His co-host, Pete Blackburn, concurred that the same thing happened to him during a recent ESPN+ stream.
Such an issue is problematic for numerous reasons. If a viewer’s stream is several minutes behind real-time, they risk getting big moments spoiled by glancing at social media or seeing a text message come through on their phone. There’s also the gambling aspect. As more and more people decide to live wager on games, unknowingly watching a stream that is several minutes behind could put someone at a huge disadvantage.
Also, there’s simply an expectation that if you’re tuned into a live sporting event, that event is happening on your screen as close to live as is technologically possible. That’s how it has been for decades, and there’s no reason the streaming era should be any different.
If the issues experienced by Bean and Blackburn are as widespread as they believe, it’d be an indictment on ESPN’s brand new direct-to-consumer app, which launched just last month. The company has marketed the app as a revolution in how fans consume sports, touting its personalization and new technologies as key pillars of that experience. However, if the app is failing at the most basic level — delivering live sporting events to fans — none of those other features matter.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.