Peacock blasted for feed crash around late Liverpool goals

A key part of NBC Sports’ strategy over the last decade-plus has been England’s Premier League. The company first won exclusive rights there in 2013, replacing ESPN and Fox Sports, and they used those matches as crucial content for NBCSN (RIP), other NBCUniversal cable channels (especially on the final week), and their Peacock service Peacock after its 2020 launch.

Indeed, with most matches now airing on Peacock, the streaming service is crucial for U.S. fans of the league. And when it doesn’t work properly, as with crashes around Darwin Núñez’s two stoppage-time goals for Liverpool in a 2-0 win against Brentford Saturday, that leads to a lot of complaints.

It’s unclear if the issue here was Peacock-specific or a problem with the Premier League’s world feed, but it certainly was Peacock that took the majority of the heat. Here are some of the criticisms lobbed at the service:

2 goals missed…. horrible service @peacock

— Alexander (@NateDavATL) January 18, 2025

Love how the Peacock signal goes out right as Darwin scores. #LFC

— Jacob Perry 🇺🇲 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@RealJacobPerry) January 18, 2025

@peacock WTF the feed stopped from Liverpool Brentford!!!

— 🦾Alt Timeline Hank🤳🏾 (@hanx3sports) January 18, 2025

Peacock: you can watch the first 90 minutes of a 0-0 slog no problem

Also Peacock: as soon as goals start coming in stoppage time, we will be completely unavailable.

— Cam Stuart (@realcamstuart) January 18, 2025

hey @peacock since you made everyone miss the two @LFC goals you might at least keep coverage going for highlights.

— OLSC Chicago (@ChicagoLFC) January 18, 2025

Feed stops right as Liverpool’s about to score and missed both goals. Bittersweet…

— Phillip Bupp (@phillipbupp) January 18, 2025

This does feed into wider discussions around streaming services and technical issues. Yes, there have been plenty of feed crashes from linear broadcast and/or cable networks over the years as well, including in soccer. But those have been even more prevalent on streaming services. And that’s not all from the early days of streaming services, either.

Indeed, in recent times, Netflix’s hugely high-profile Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight in November hit some of the most widespread and most sustained issues in a while. That raised questions about their Christmas Day NFL broadcasts (which, fortunately for them, went much more smoothly). And Peacock hit major issues with the Premier League and the Ryder Cup in September 2023, and while things have seemed smoother for their streaming recently, there are still plenty of people ready to yell at them over just the concept of games being on a streaming service (as opposed to on cable networks, which no one ever has to pay for…). So a streaming issue like this, even while on a lesser-viewed game relative to something like the NFL, certainly isn’t ideal for them.