The Philadelphia Eagles may have (decisively) won the on-field game in Super Bowl LIX, but Fox’s free Tubi streaming service has an argument as one of the biggest off-field victors. Fox cited an average audience of 13.6 million viewers on the service, a key part of their record of 126 million overall viewers (a preliminary number). And the experience streaming on the service seemed to draw relatively few social media complaints compared to some past streaming options. And real-time streaming firm Phenix, in their sixth annual measurement of various services’ latency or lag behind live action for the Super Bowl, declared Tubi this year’s victor with just 26 seconds of average lag:
🏈 The 6th Annual Super Bowl Latency Study is LIVE! ⏳
Measuring latency from your favorite streaming platforms.
Some fans saw game-changing plays over a minute before others due to streaming delays.
Who’s ahead? Who’s lagging behind? Find out here: ⬇️https://t.co/NQyxByGyzO
— Phenix Real Time Solutions (@phenixrts) February 10, 2025
As we discussed in a 2023 writeup of Phenix’s data for that Super Bowl, this comes with a few things worth noting. First, the lag here is relative to fans in the stadium, not even those watching over the air (over-the-air lag has been estimated at eight to 20 seconds by Phenix CMO Jed Corenthal in the past).
Second, there was plenty of cable lag too, with Phenix’s report noting latencies from 32 to 81 seconds there, well behind the average Tubi lag. And third, not everyone watching on a streaming service gets the same lag, as there are impacts from internet service providers and users’ individual setups as well. Indeed, in addition to the average lag graphic seen at top, Phenix also provided a quite-interesting graphic on the drift within each single service:
There aren’t huge changes from the overall averages in the rough order with drift data incorporated, but the drift data is useful for showing that measured viewers on each service had dramatically-different experiences. (Interestingly enough, Tubi and Hulu+Live TV seemed to have the most consistent experiences.)
How exactly was this put together? Well, Phenix collected 62 data points (down from 173 last year) from users across the U.S. who were streaming the game on the seven measured platforms, measuring that data against benchmarks collected from within the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. They note that this involved both browser-based and app-based streaming.
(Update: It should be emphasized again that this is only one measurement of latency, conducted by Phenix and revealed with respect to these seven platforms. There are other third-party latency measurements out there. And the measured platforms, and other platforms, have their own internal metrics. For example, Comcast says that as per their internal metrics, their Xfinity Enhanced 4k feed was 14 seconds behind live action, 2.5 seconds behind Fox’s over-the-air feed, three seconds ahead of Tubi’s 4K feed, and 14 seconds ahead of the fastest virtual multichannel programming distributor. That would be well ahead of what Phenix found as the lowest latency for cable, but both numbers can be correct, as they’re obtained via different methods. Undoubtedly other providers also have internal metric data with different numbers.)
A significant part of Phenix’s data is that they’ve been doing this for six years now, so there are notable year-over-year comparisons against their past results. In particular, this year saw substantial improvements from three of the five platforms measured both years (NFL+, Hulu+Live TV, Fubo), but drops from two (DirecTV Stream, YouTube TV). But the 2025 numbers (again, at top) look better than these 2024 ones overall:
Back on the 2025 front, as Matthew Keys noted in a writeup at The Desk, a big part of Tubi’s 26-second time here seems to have come from them using the national Fox feed rather than local affiliate ones. (This was also the case for Fox’s streaming in 2023 through the Fox Sports app, which averaged just 23.76 seconds behind in-stadium.) And it’s not possible for multichannel video programming distributors like YouTube TV or Fubo to just show that feed, as their carriage agreements are with local affiliates. But it is still interesting to see how much faster the national feed seems to be.
The other notable takeaway here is that significant lag behind the in-stadium experience continues to be a thing on many streaming services. And Corenthal and Phenix CEO Roy Reichbach weighed in on that in comments in a release:
“When we shared the results of our Super Bowl latency study back in 2023, I remember thinking then there was no excuse for delays and buffering, which honestly destroyed the viewing experience for fans during one of the biggest sporting events of the year. Unfortunately now, 728 days later, and I’m still saying the exact same thing. Fans are spending more than ever on way more services than they need to keep up with exclusivity rights and yet the experience on each continues to be subpar. My appeal to streaming platforms in 2025 is to please make the experience better for fans. I do believe this year is the tipping point, and many fans will cut the streaming cord if we don’t see progress.” – Jed Corenthal, CMO of Phenix, Former NFL Director of Marketing
“For the last six years, our Super Bowl latency study has uncovered one of the major issues holding back streaming from being the beacon we all expected when we cut the cord. More than just being annoying for fans, the business implications around these latency issues are enormous. As a live event buffers or is over one minute behind what is actually happening on the field, things like real-time betting, second-screen viewing, peer interactions, and live fan engagements cannot happen. These features are the future of sports viewing and sports culture. The playing field (pun intended) is uneven and each season we deny fans what they’re looking for, frustration grows and networks miss out on massive opportunities. Thankfully the technology exists to remove this barrier, we just have to stop being afraid to use it.” – Roy Reichbach, CEO of Phenix
Both Reichbach and Corenthal make valid points there. Latency certainly does matter, especially for those trying to engage with a game on social media or via live betting. And it’s significant to see how high a lot of the lag figures continue to be.
