As a mild-mannered, cord-cutting American, I decided to sign up for Paramount+ on Sunday so I could watch CBS Sports’ presentation of Super Bowl LVIII from the comfort of my home.
After a series of issues, annoyances, lags, and crashes, I gave up on the TV experience early in the second quarter and watched the rest of the Super Bowl on my laptop. While I was able to continue watching the game through its conclusion, I still had to deal with several crashes when the feed simply crapped out, forcing me to reload Paramount+.
All in all, it was a pretty frustrating experience. Aside from the crispness of the broadcast, everything was a downgrade from simply watching the Super Bowl on basic cable or via an antenna.
Turns out, I was not alone. Many other Paramount+ customers reported similar issues, from app crashes to error codes to infinity load times.
I’ve had to restart Paramount+ four times already because the sound gets out of sync.
If you can’t keep your streaming working @paramountplus you shouldn’t be hosting the Super Bowl.
— bressler.eth (@djbressler) February 11, 2024
anyone else using paramount+ to watch the superbowl and it simply is not working?
— hanah (@__heartshaped__) February 11, 2024
Enjoying the Super Bowl on @paramountplus pic.twitter.com/HktbGSjb6Y
— BobWehadababyitsaboy (@AustinKiger) February 12, 2024
According to our highly unscientific X poll, more than 63% of viewers reported some kind of issue with Paramount+, with 30% saying that the glitches made the broadcast “unwatchable.”
It’s fair to say that a lot of Paramount+ users had a perfectly fine experience, and some users said the glitches subsided once the game got going, but the issues appeared to be wide-ranging enough to keep the Paramount+Help account on X busy all night.
Paramount Streaming’s CTO told Fast Company last week that there were “over 500 team members across five offices around the United States that are all working together to ensure that everything goes smoothly.” Apparently, they needed 500 more.
The specifics of what happened are less important than the experience that customers had. Viewers like me don’t really care how you make it work, only that it works. And if it doesn’t, what’s the point of you?
Thankfully, there were other options if someone wanted to watch the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime. The game was still available on CBS. An alternate broadcast on Nickelodeon offered a family-friendly version of the game. And a cord cutter could simply sign up for YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Stream, or Fubo right then and watch the game.
As the NFL gets cozier and cozier with streaming services, and rumors swirl about the potential of a streaming-0nly Super Bowl one day, it’s experiences like this that are going to stick with a lot of NFL fans and viewers. Just like with technology like AI, we’re putting the cart before the horse when talking about whether or not we’re ready for a streaming-only Super Bowl. The potential for disaster remains so high that the juice still can’t be worth the squeeze (Not that it’s going to happen anytime soon).
There are still plenty of potential pitfalls out there for Super Bowl viewers beyond streaming issues, as some Spectrum customers found out on Sunday. But it’s clear that whatever advances have been made in the world of streaming, we’re not there yet, much as they might like to convince us otherwise.
After signing up for Paramount+ an hour before the Super Bowl, I canceled my free trial immediately after the game finished. I saw all I needed to see, for better or worse.
