NFL fans frustrated over Amazon Prime’s patchy TNF debut

When Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers locked horns on Thursday, NFL fans got a ringside view of what the future of live sports streaming holds. And it wasn’t pretty.

Amazon Prime Video, which was streaming exclusively for the first time ever a Thursday night football game, possibly underestimated the number of people tuning in—north of some 10 million did, though actual figures are still awaited.

Colossal viewership
That number is huge for a streaming platform broadcasting the game solo, considering Thursday night NFL games routinely racked up an audience of about 15 million when they were broadcast simultaneously across several platforms—CBS, NFL Network, NFL Digital, CBS Digital and Prime Video—till last week.

Glitches were bound to occur.

‘Pixelated and fuzzy’
Hundreds of thousands of demographic-spanning NFL fans, facing bad picture quality, regular freezing and choppy feed, poured out their frustration on Twitter during the broadcast on Amazon Prime, which is paying upwards of $1 billion a year to be the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football (TNF).

“Love watching Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. Love that it’s all pixelated and fuzzy. Also love how the sound and the video are not synced up correctly,” @SullyMacCat85 said sarcastically.

“First night of watching NFL on Amazon Prime… broadcast is terrible on video and audio. Can’t believe this is a thing now,” @seconds732 wrote.

Different challenge
The general consensus was that Prime Video held up during preseason, but “its TNF debut was always going to be a different challenge due to increased traffic,” said SportsPro. “If streaming really wants to unseat linear TV as the favored way of watching sport, then its technical infrastructure needs to be watertight.”