CLEVELAND — Last night's Eastern Conference Finals Game 1 between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics was a nail-biter right down to the last couple of minutes, but a lot of television viewers did not get to see how it ended.
(Let me also add: If you're a Celtic fan, it really wasn't that bad a deal that you didn't see how it ended)
Instead, those with YouTube TV saw this: The provider had suddenly cut out of the game with four minutes to go, they went to a commercial, and they never came back to the game. YouTube TV acknowledged the issue last night, and alerted customers that they were on top of it.
But further ahead now, this sparks a lot of concern for what's to come in the upcoming NFL season: With the NFL Sunday Ticket now moving to YouTube TV, suddenly fans are saying, "Man, are they able to handle this, or are they going to have technical issues?"
This is the whole streaming thing, and what's more, NBC and Peacock just made a deal with the NFL to take a wild-card playoff game this year and make it a solely streamed event. In other words, it's only going to be available online (except in the teams' local markets).
I am 1,000% against that.
That's a playoff game, and suddenly, now you're going to have to jump through hoops to be able to see that. That's not right — the NFL's making billions of dollars, but they make a deal with NBC for $110 million and are cutting a lot of out of the ability to see that game.
Were there also technical problems this past year with Amazon doing the "Thursday Night Football" package? Yes, there were, almost weekly. If you can't do it, you can't do it, but suddenly, you're robbing people of something that they wait all year long to watch: an NFL football game, or an NBA playoff game like last night.
So, until you iron out all these technical issues, this new way of doing things streaming seems to be a little bit ahead of itself when it's really not ready to go. And if it's not ready to go in the NFL season on that Sunday Ticket package, that is going to be a major problem for YouTube TV, and a black eye for NFL.