ESPN CFP national championship streaming issues prompt widespread complaints

It’s well-established that streaming services often run into some problems with the highest-profile events thanks to the numbers of people trying to watch that way, from the Super Bowl to the World Cup. Well, Monday night’s College Football Playoff national championship game saw some of those same issues, this time with ESPN’s streaming options.

Anyone else having issues streaming the game on the ESPN app?

— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) January 14, 2020

https://twitter.com/smitty1789/status/1216893955952074754

Hey @espn , any way I could get the biggest game of the year to work on your app that you promoted would be streaming? If you could that would be great…thanks

— Erick Weinreich (@Erick_Weinreich) January 14, 2020

You would think after the embarrassment of the semi-final game, @espn would have fixed their streaming service. pic.twitter.com/f123Hu9lV3

— Cory Dippold (@cdipp) January 14, 2020

https://twitter.com/kaydub03/status/1216896395141054469

I’d love to watch the #NationalChampionship but @espn streaming server had other plans…

— Austin Bracci (@A_Braccoli) January 14, 2020

Glad to see that @espn can't handle streaming the @CFBPlayoff championship game. I shouldn't be surprised. It's just disappointing. Thanks for nothing. #ESPN #LSUvsCLEM #NationalChampionship

— Drew W. (@WalkerTN15) January 14, 2020

Streaming failure on the biggest night in college football. Not a good look @espn

— Sam Haymon (@samhaymon) January 14, 2020

https://twitter.com/thefootgeneral/status/1216898474014277632

ESPN app is terrible. Biggest game of the year and the whole streaming service is down.

— Trey Ferguson (@TFergusonPDX) January 14, 2020

https://twitter.com/whitneyebowers/status/1216900296716234752

Those are just a few of the many, many tweets complaining about ESPN streaming here. And AA staff were able to verify that there were issues with the ESPN app with both Verizon FiOS and Charter as providers. It did work on a Roku in California with authentication through AT&T, and it’s working for some other people, so this isn’t a universal outage, but it’s definitely a significant one nonetheless. And it’s one at a very unfortunate time for those hoping to watch this vital game.

[Photo via Cory Dippold on Twitter]