YouTube TV somewhat responded to legitimate concerns regarding live-delay issues customers could encounter while using the service to enjoy the “NFL Sunday Ticket” out-of-market package this coming season.
“The YouTube TV team is working on building a high-quality ‘Sunday Ticket’ experience,” a YouTube TV spokesperson told Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk via email. “Overall, YouTube TV is built on the infrastructure that powers YouTube and reliably serves billions of playback every day. Users can check their Live Latency in ‘Stats For Nerds’ directly in the YouTube TV app. We’re always working to find the right tradeoff between latency, buffering and quality.”
On Wednesday, both Kevin Harrish of Awful Announcing and Florio mentioned how inevitable latency issues will affect “NFL Sunday Ticket” viewers, particularly those who aren’t used to utilizing streaming services. In short, the streamed broadcast of a game could be anywhere from 50 to roughly 75 seconds behind the airing of that contest on a network such as CBS or Fox.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like all that big of a deal. Casual fans can merely avoid social media apps and turn notifications off their phones to avoid having big plays, such as touchdowns, “spoiled” before those moments air on YouTube. However, Harrish pointed out that any significant delay could prevent some from taking part in live betting advertised by NFL gambling partners such as DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Entertainment.
