Despite dire predictions that its streaming capabilities would be strained by the massive numbers of viewers watching the first Sunday broadcasts of the 2023-2024 NFL season, it appears that YouTube TV’s launch of its NFL Sunday Ticket went off with minimal glitches. 

Sunday provided the ultimate test for Google’s YouTube TV with millions of fans tuning into the popular service, which offers all NFL games for $500 per season per subscriber (with a variety of discounts). Google inked the $14 billion deal late last year to carry the subscription on its YouTube TV; the service had been exclusive to DirecTV for nearly 30 years. 

Although Google has not released subscription numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket, DirectTV had an estimated 2 million subscribers for the service before losing it to Google. 

Fans were skeptical that YouTube’s streaming service would be up to the task of replicating the technology enabled by DirecTV’s satellite service that allowed the provider to broadcast NFL games with minimal latency. For several years, since the Super Bowl began being streamed, reports indicated that viewers watching the big game on a traditional pay TV service or antenna were catching the action up to a minute earlier than those watching online.

(Read more: Low Latency Distribution: What Does It Mean to Video Streamers?)

CNBC was among those wringing their hands over the prospect of higher than normal delays. “As thousands of football fans fill stadiums across America to see the first Sunday of NFL action, millions more will watch at home and at bars—as much as one minute later,” the network predicted last week.

CNBC based much of its expectations on previous Super Bowl reports as well as experts who noted that due to the technical differences between the efficiency of satellite or broadcast technology—and the “one to one” aspect of streaming—online viewers could end up finding out about a touchdown as much as a minute after the broadcast. Echoing tech experts it interviewed for its report, CNBC said  “the delay ‘Sunday Ticket’ subscribers will face on Sunday can’t be helped and is just the reality of current technology.”

But Google defended its technology, citing the worldwide popularity of its YouTube service. “Overall, YouTube TV is built on the infrastructure that powers YouTube, and reliably serves billions of playback every day, the company told NBC News. “The YouTube TV team is working on building a high-quality Sunday Ticket experience.”

Although there were some issues with YouTube TV's multiview feature, in the end, the handwringing was the most part, all for naught, since technical issues didn’t become the headlines many had feared.

“Wow, Sunday Ticket on YouTube is amazing,” one user wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), Yahoo News reports. “On my phone, the broadcast delay is only 10 seconds… behind AN ANTENNA.” 

“Top notch work moving NFL Sunday Ticket over,” wrote another fan on X. “Truly… No hassles AT ALL. Logging in has been easy, no delays, no weird ‘verify your current playback area’ messages.”

Shortly after games began on the east coast on Sunday, Matt Infante, chief operating officer of media company Pro Football Network tweeted that “NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube not showing the kind of delay that many feared. So far.”

Streaming expert Dan Rayburn praised Google for its first weekend performance, describing the outcome as a “touchdown” for YouTube, but warning that the company isn’t out of the woods.

“I’m rooting for the Google and YouTube TV teams to have great execution every week throughout the year,” he wrote on his Streaming Media Blog. “If they can keep any technical issues to a minimum, and short-lived, plus provide accurate and timely support, it helps the entire streaming industry. If YouTube TV has any widespread problems with streaming the NFL Sunday Ticket, the backlash from many will be that streaming is not ready for primetime and can’t be used as a replacement to broadcast TV distribution and that would hurt the entire industry.”

And while YouTube TV appeared to escape unscathed from its first test, it's a mixed bag for traditional TV with  ESPN, ABC and more than  20 other Disney channels having been pulled from Charter's Spectrum TV service; more than 200 network affiliates owned or managed by Nexstar Media Group blacked out on DirecTV and a new impasse occurring late last week when Dish TV removed subscribers' access to 37 local Hearst channels in 27 markets in a third  carriage dispute. 

NEW YORK—The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of video streaming, and as companies look to bolster their streaming offerings, NS1 and streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn have pinpointed some of the biggest challenges to these efforts.

According to Rayburn’s report, “Growing Demands for Video Streaming Drive Companies to Intelligent Traffic Management Solutions,” the biggest challenges concerning video streaming companies are traffic management and visibility into quality of experience (QoE) issues. 

Specifically, 62% of respondents ranked automated and intelligent traffic routing as the most important tool for delivering a positive end-user experience, while 42% of companies that do not currently have solutions in place are looking to implement them in the next six to 12 months.

Rayburn’s findings showed that 42% of respondents then cited the lack of visibility into QoE issues as a top challenge. Other challenges included efficient traffic routing across a multi-CDN deployment (33%) and lack of visibility with vendor platforms (33%). In addition, more than half of respondents said they lack the appropriate technology to dynamically adjust routing for shifts in network availability, latency and congestion, which results in inconsistent performance.

“Streaming requires content owners to be nimble and resilient within their workflows and infrastructure to deliver streams to end users over many different devices and platforms with a great user experience,” said Rayburn. “Companies gain additional benefits and can address top-reported viewer concerns by selecting traffic steering platforms that ingest quality of experience metrics—real-time data about playback failures, startup times, rebuffering and video quality—along with real user monitoring (RUM) and network data.” 

As things head into 2021, more than half of the respondents expect an increase in volume of streaming content in the next year; of those 32% say the streaming volume could double and 10% believe it could more than double.

The NS1 and Rayburn report included more than 200 executives from media & entertainment, telecommunications and technology companies. The full report is available for download. 

NEW YORK—Previewing this year’s Streaming Summit, the NAB Show New York web page describes streaming as “the new business currency.” This year’s lineup, which offers executive interviews, technical presentations and case studies, is full of “real-world practical advice, tips and tricks for those with both business and technical challenges in packaging, monetizing and distributing online video,” said Conference Chairman Dan Rayburn, a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

This year’s Streaming Summit is sponsored Ad-ID, Agora.io, AWS Elemental, Brightcove, Google, Haivision, Limelight Networks and Roku.

The Streaming Summit is scheduled for Oct. 17–18, beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday with a Fireside Chat featuring NBC Sports Group/Playmaker Media Senior Vice President & CTO Eric Black in conversation with Rayburn about “Delivering the Biggest Audiences for the Biggest Events.” This half-hour chat is the first of 10 on the schedule. It will be followed immediately by Hulu Vice President, Head of Advertising Platforms Jeremy Helfand who will offer attendees “A Fresh Take on Advertising in the Living Room — Reaching Audiences in OTT.” In the afternoon, Google and TotalPlay get in on the action with “Bringing Addressability to Every Screen, Including Linear Television.”

Another interesting chat will be held Thursday morning, featuring Comcast Cable Executive Director of Technology and Product Chris Reynolds discussing how the telecom is “Building an Aggregator of Aggregators.” Other Thursday chats will highlight players who are known for disrupting the media space; namely, reps from Playstation Vue and Facebook (“Video and the Future of Immersive Experiences”).

Aside from most of the Fireside Chats, the rest of the conference will be broken down into three concurrent tracks. However, Rayburn explained, “We have business, technology and content topics throughout all of them. We don’t group content together based on a subject as it allows more options for attendees to move amongst all the tracks, while getting a more diverse program, content wise.”

The schedule also features time devoted to topics that are trending and timeless for media creators. 

“We’ll have technical sessions on codecs, bundling of content, protocols, distribution of video, blockchain, server side ad insertion and a host of topic around monetization of content direct to consumer, advertising strategies, cross-screen video ad campaigns and key insights into consumer data,” Rayburn said.

Examples of these technical sessions include: “Best Practices For Live Webcasting Production,” “Using OTT Consumer Data to Determine What, How and Why Viewers Want to Watch,” “Best Practices for Deploying Server Side Ad Insertion,” “Optimizing Streaming Performance and Video Workflows With SRT” and “Comparing Five Blockchain Startups And Their Potential Role In OTT.”

TARGET AUDIENCE

Rayburn noted that the Streaming Summit will cover “everything in the streaming media ecosystem, both technical and monetization subjects,” so he expects show visitors with a variety of job functions.

“We’ll have attendees focusing on content strategies; media operations and technology; solutions architects; those in charge of OTT video strategy; encoding engineers; and those managing video advertising solutions.”

That range is also reflected in the backgrounds of the speakers, who work in broadcast, media, publishing, social media and other industries that are involved in packaging, monetizing and distributing online video.

Those interested in attending must select the Streaming Summit Package ($795) during registration.

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