It seems all but certain that there will be a streaming version of NFL Sunday Ticket after the 2022/2023 football season. I have been largely avoiding this discussion because I don’t like unfounded rumors. Several sites have Apple, Amazon, and Disney in a 3-way race to pay as much as possible for this package. Other sites have already declared Apple the winner, given its recent commitment to sports. It’s still not certain what will happen, if DIRECTV will retain any of the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, and how this will impact businesses. Bars and restaurants generally lack the bandwidth they would need to show several games at once, so that’s a big consideration. But me, I have just one question:
What makes anyone think this will actually work?
Big, popular events always cause internet crashes. In years past, even the small number of people who tried to stream NFL Sunday Ticket would sometimes cause servers to crash or neighborhood speeds to drop. And now they think they are going to be able to do this every Sunday for 18 weeks. Seriously? Let me just say that I doubt it.
Weekends are consistently the busiest times for home internet, because, obviously. Even though there’s a lot more internet capacity now than there once was, I still don’t think most areas are up to being able to feed that much HD for that long all at once on a weekend. I just don’t see it happening.
And lest you think that internet crashes are a thing of the past, let me remind you that not more than 2 months ago Netflix’s servers crashed when everyone tried to watch Stranger Things at the same time. This is not a problem from long ago. This is something we are struggling with right now.
Buffering, low quality, and drops
Yes, I think that the viewing experience will suffer if NFL Sunday Ticket goes to streaming. If there’s still the option to stay with DIRECTV, enough people might do that so it isn’t an issue. But I think there will be a real problem with quality, and it’s going to happen at the worst possible times.
Assuming that the NFL Sunday Ticket experience is similar to MLB.TV, you’ll be offered replays, some sort of DVR function, and enhanced features. This all sounds great but on those big plays, everyone will be doing this all at the same time. This is going to make for even more stress on the internet. This will lead to buffering, causing you to lose the big play when you really want to see it.
Here’s what I am going to do
Honestly, I’m not going to call myself a huge football fan. Because I’m not. Too many reasons to list, but I’m more of a baseball guy. Still, I’ve had Sunday Ticket for years because I think it’s a good value and it makes people want to come to my house. If it’s still available on DIRECTV, I’m going to stay with them for a while. Seems to me that if streaming is available, it’s going to be an unholy mess the first year. I’d rather wait it out.
What about you?
