Last Sunday, YouTube, YouTube TV, and NFL Sunday Ticket had their first major outage of the 2023-2024 NFL season. This resulted in many fans being unable to watch their games during heavy buffering. A message on YouTube TV’s help page YouTube last Sunday said, “If you’re experiencing buffering issues on YouTube our team is aware and working on a fix. YouTube TV or NFL Sunday Ticket may also be impacted.”
This was the first major issue for YouTube TV since adding the NFL Sunday Ticket, and now Google says they fixed the glitch that caused the widespread issues.
“People can have confidence in this Sunday, but it is top of mind for us that we are responsible for delivering the exceptional experience that we have promised to our viewers,” said Lori Conkling from Google at the SBJ Media Innovators conference this week. “So we take that very seriously, and we have done everything possible to ensure it does not happen again.”
Streaming live events is significantly more difficult to do compared to on-demand video. There are many technical reasons why on-demand streaming is more difficult but the main reason is the fact that everyone is trying to watch live events at the same time. Unlike on-demand events that often spread out the viewing over hours or even days.
Google is not alone in having recent live issues Bally Sports has had a number of outages this week. So far, though YouTube TV has a good history of keeping its service online even under heavy demand.