CBS’ streaming apps crashed late in the Super Bowl for many, throughout the game for others

Streaming’s becoming a more and more important way to watch sports, even for big events. For example, 15 percent of respondents to a SI/PCMag survey who planned to watch Sunday’s Super Bowl LIII said they planned to stream the game, with that rising to 33 percent amongst those 18 to 24. But there have been plenty of technical issues with streaming sports, and those tend to rise even further around big games, when a lot of people are trying to stream the same thing at once.

That happened again Sunday for CBS’ streaming coverage of the Super Bowl, and at an extremely inopportune time. There were plenty of reports of the CBS Sports (especially) and CBS All Access streaming apps crashing late in the Super Bowl (on several different devices, but especially on Roku devices), and a few reports of earlier crashes:

#CBSSPORTS why did your app just crash with 4:17 left in the Super Bowl #SuperBowlLlll #CBS #sports

— Durwood Williams (@DurwoodWms) February 4, 2019

Glad to be a part of the CBS app crash on #roku #SuperBowl It's ok… depressed anyways. pic.twitter.com/CNzmplafcn

— Jonathan Petramala (@jpetramala) February 4, 2019

https://twitter.com/grilledcheese28/status/1092255094366711809

Did anyone else just have #cbssports crash with 4:00 left of the Super Bowl? Wtf!? #SuperBowl53 #SuperBowl #cbs #roku

— RYNO RIOT (@RynoRiot) February 4, 2019

@sportsreiter way to go CBS HQ!! Crash with 2 minutes left in the super bowl. #fail #CBSfail

— Cam (@CashMoney503) February 4, 2019

https://twitter.com/jdvickers/status/1092255688527695872

so happy I pay $6 a month for the @CBS app on my @amazon fire stick for it to crash multiple times during the Superbowl #fanfuckingtastic #cancelingasap

— Cassie (@kinky_slinky21) February 4, 2019

https://twitter.com/Randal66620658/status/1092256504751816709

@CBS All Access was officially terrible. Terrible quality and the stream even dropped out completely(which they tried to blame on my internet). Thankfully there was nothing to miss in this game.

— MurderMondays (@MurderMondays) February 4, 2019

https://twitter.com/G51972/status/1092264357164212224

@CBS All Access was officially terrible. Terrible quality and the stream even dropped out completely(which they tried to blame on my internet). Thankfully there was nothing to miss in this game.

— MurderMondays (@MurderMondays) February 4, 2019

yeah, it sucked… I got @CBSAllAccess as a backup cuz my HD antenna kinda sucks for the CBS channel and I had people over… after it screwed up like the 10th time, we saw that we could stream it free on Amazon Prime… so I basically just wasted $9.99

— Craig Kirkendall (@WillieChuckJr) February 4, 2019

Look, crashes happen, especially around events with this many trying to stream them. Just two years ago, Fox’s Fox Sports Go streaming app crashed for many during Super Bowl LI. So this isn’t unprecedented or unique to CBS. But it’s yet another sign that streaming efforts are still struggling in reliability relative to cable (especially) or satellite (which can have its own outage problems, but those generally come during significant weather).

And that’s particularly rough for those depending on streaming who had people over to watch the game, especially considering that this outage appears to have screwed up the end of the game for many.

[Photo from Jonathan Petramala on Twitter]