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NFL Sunday Ticket has kicked off on YouTube and I will be live blogging what I see all day at this post.

I am testing across many devices, with multiple accounts, and have users in other states also providing me with direct feedback. I’m also watching the Reddit message boards, Twitter, and the live chat within games on the iPad. I haven’t seen any reports of streams being down but am seeing LOTS of comments around issues tied to games being blacked out which is expected, but is confusing many.

Mobile and web do not support multiview and YouTube is offering a pre-defined listing of multiview streams. Even with YouTube making that very clear, you see many viewers complaining they can’t pick the games in multiview individually. NFL Sunday Ticket games have distinct source feeds broadcast in 1080i (a mix of native and upscaled) compared to 720p local broadcasts. There is no 4K streaming of NFL Sunday Ticket.

Updates Below:

9:30pm ET: YouTube had a great first week streaming NFL Sunday Ticket. The majority of user complaints were tied to things out of YouTube’s control, like blackout rules, or were as a result of users not understanding that multiview wasn’t supported on desktop or mobile. YouTube has been very clear with their support pages and promoting what the service would and would not provide. There were some issues on YouTube’s side with location services not working right, pixelated streams [1], [2] and playback errors [1], [2], [3], but nothing I saw to indicate it impacted the majority of users. It is unknown if YouTube and the NFL will put out any viewership numbers after week one but if they do, I will add those numbers to this post.

6:27pm ET: I don’t know how YouTube was handling support calls for today but there were more than a few complaints online of consumers being “disconnected” after being put on hold and “hung up on,” once they got through to someone. Also, long hold times of over 2 hours. Hopefully YouTube support will get fewer calls in week two with users having learned the limitations of the service but don’t count on it.

5:50pm ET: Some fans are using the multiview feature to their full advantage. Many have shared photos of their multiview setups on Twitter. So far, I haven’t seen any major technical issues around multiview aside from some games freezing or buffering, which is always going to happen. But I have not seen those complaints in any large quantity.

4:50pm ET: It’s interesting to note just how many ad breaks don’t have ads in the stream and show random images instead. I don’t know if that’s because they are unsold or YouTube TV doesn’t have the rights to show them but many ad spots are “house ads” for YouTube TV.

4:30pm ET: On a side note, regarding YouTube TV the company has acknowledged that on the Apple TV 4K device the ESPN 4K channel is currently limited to 1080p60 quality. YouTube TV support says this problem was expected to be addressed with a prior large Apple update in April but apparently it has not been fixed.

4:15pm ET: Individual game streams on YouTube desktop and mobile don’t show how many users are watching the stream, but the Week 1 Preview Show did show the number watching, which I saw peaking at just over 11,000 at 12:42pm ET.

4:00pm ET: YouTube is aware of an issue on the YouTube app (but not YouTube TV) with regards to multiview and RedZone. If you don’t have NFL RedZone, you may still see it listed in your multiview options on Home, but then will see an error message and won’t be able to watch the RedZone stream. YouTube says, “we’re sorry this is a confusing experience and we’re working to fix it. For now, don’t select the multiview options that include RedZone if you haven’t signed up for RedZone.”

3:45pm ET: By far the biggest issue I am seeing reported by users is how they select the home area or current location in YouTube TV. Many are reporting they are following the instructions YouTube has provided but it’s still not working for them.

3:25pm ET: I am seeing latency of between 20-30 seconds depending on the device being used. Here’s some stats from the desktop on the Mac. And for those that will say this is a problem for YouTube and they need to use “ultra low latency”, they don’t. They are not losing out on sign ups due to the latency.

3:03pm ET: Two hours into the kickoff and from what I am seeing and from what is being reported by users, YouTube’s streams are looking good. Multiview is working well and I’ve not had any of the streams stop or buffer across the 3 TVs I’m testing on.

2:30pm ET: There are multiple reports of users having problems with regards to concurrent stream limitations. I don’t know how widespread this is but I have seen a limited number of complaints since the games started.

2:15pm ET: While it appears that YouTube’s live streams are looking good for the majority of users, the same can’t be said for users trying to watch via Comcast’s Xfinity stream app. It is suffering a major outage which took place right as the NFL games kicked off. At 2:02pm ET Xfinity acknowledged the outage on Twitter, but only in replies to users, they have not posted anything on their main feed. They said, “We are aware of the issue and our fix teams are engaged and doing everything they can to restore the Xfinity Stream functionality as quickly as they can.”

2:07pm ET: On the desktop, when you login to your account on YouTube.com you don’t even see any NFL games listed which makes no sense. YouTube’s own instructions for desktop say you have to search “NFL Sunday Ticket” or find the NFL Channel to be able to see the games.

2:00pm: Some users are saying when trying to stream it’s telling them to verify their location on their phone. But when they go to their phone and verify location and it still asks them to verify location on TV. Seems to be stuck in a loop. Seeing this reported [2] [3] across Apple TV and Roku.

1:50pm ET: Multiple users are reporting scrambled video of the Vikings game in particular. [2]

1:30pm ET: I see users saying they don’t know how to set their location when watching on a TV as YouTube needs your location to know what games are blacked out in your area. I was able to set it via my phone but others are saying it is not working for them. I am seeing many complaints of this.

On Wednesday, September 6, Sling TV and DISH Technologies filed a suit against fuboTV alleging infringement on eight patents related to streaming video. All of the patents relate to “multi-bitrate content streaming,” and “adaptive-rate shifting” with the oldest patent, (8,868,772) dating back to Move Networks technology in 2014.

Some of these patents come from Move Networks which was acquired by EchoStar Advanced Technologies L.L.C., then a wholly-owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation which spent $45 million to acquire Move Networks and its ABR patent portfolio. DISH Digital Holding L.L.C. then acquired EchoStar Advanced Technologies L.L.C. in connection with a joint venture with EchoStar Corporation in 2012.

In the filing, DISH lays out how they tried to discuss licensing terms with fuboTV for four years, before finally getting an answer back from fuboTV on September 5 of this year stating that fuboTV did not believe it needed a license. DISH says that “after over four years of negotiation attempts to no avail, fuboTV continues to use DISH-owned technology in its streaming services without a license.” DISH is requesting a trial by jury. Case number: 1:2023cv00986 in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

In 2021, DISH filed a similar patent suit against Peloton Interactive Inc., NordicTrack maker Icon Health & Fitness Inc. and Mirror owner Lululemon Athletica Inc. In May of this year, Peloton paid Dish Network a “one-time settlement payment” of $75 million and settled the suit. The case with NordicTrack exercise equipment maker iFit is still on going.

Disclaimer: Over the past 20 years I have worked as a patent expert on various cases involving audio and video patents tied to Move Networks, Burst Technologies, Viatech, Microsoft, Nokia, AOL, Samsung and Spotify. I’ve never worked on any cases involving DISH or fuboTV.

I think the estimates on the number of subs for Disney+ and the date of profitability for Disney’s DTC business that The Walt Disney Company has given to Wall Street are now in jeopardy. Based on the current challenges to their business, I don’t see how they reach their current forecasted numbers by fiscal 2024, which is September 28, 2024. Updated: Five days after I published this post Bloomberg is reporting that internally, Disney has cut their forecasted numbers for Disney+ subscribers and will miss their most recent public projections by tens of millions of subscribers.

In August of 2022, Disney lowered its longer-term forecast for Disney+ subscribers to 215 million to 245 million, down 15 million on both the low end and high end of their previous guidance, which they previously set in December 2020 at 230 million to 260 million by the end of fiscal 2024. At the end of July, Disney reported 146.1 million total subscribers to Disney+ globally (including Disney+ Hotstar) and lost 11.7 million subscribers worldwide in the quarter, mostly in India due to the loss of IPL content.

Based on their new projections they need to add nearly 70 million Disney+ subscribers in the next 14 months, averaging 5 million net new subs per month. That’s a staggering number to reach so it’s not surprising that Disney just announced a special promotional price of $1.99 per month for Disney+ for 3 months. But even if these promotions help Disney gain net new subs for Disney+, they have to keep them long-term and prevent them from churning off.

This could be even harder to do if the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike continues and shrinks the number of new titles that come to Disney+ over the coming months. Also, Disney is taking a $1.9 billion impairment charge for the content they are removing from their platform, which started in May of this year, and said they “intend to produce lower volumes of content.” Having less content and less choice isn’t ideal when you are trying to add so many net new subs to your platform.

On the profitability estimate, Disney lowered their DTC losses to $512 million last quarter, down from the previous quarter of $659 million and down even further from the $1.1 billion they lost in fiscal Q1. So it’s no surprise that Disney is raising pricing on October 12th on some of their packages. ESPN+ will go from $9.99 to $10.99. Hulu + Live TV packages will each go up by $7 with the ad plan increasing to $76.99 and the tier with no ads on VOD rising to $89.99. Disney+ Premium with no ads will go from $10.99 to $13.99 for U.S. customers and Hulu without ads will increase from $14.99 to $17.99.

In November, Disney+ ad-supported plans will launch in Canada, the U.K. and eight other European countries and Disney has said that in December, it will increase subscription prices of Disney+ without ads in those markets. Disney also plans to crack down on illicit password-sharing, but how they plan to do this and when is unknown since the company has only said they plan to “roll out tactics sometime in 2024.” Raising prices and cracking down on password sharing is not going to be enough to get Disney’s DTC business to profitability if they can’t add net new subs.

Also working against the company were challenges they called out last quarter in their DTC business saying there was a negative impact due to “lower advertising revenue” and “higher programming and production costs” for their streaming business. In November of last year, former CEO Bob Chapek said “Disney+ will still achieve profitability in fiscal 2024, assuming we do not see a meaningful shift in the economic climate.”

While current CEO Bob Iger has not called out any meaningful shift in the economic climate, we all know it exists. Competition from other streaming services, fewer net new ads across the industry, content being removed from platforms, higher prices, the actors’ and writers’ strike, blackouts on pay TV services, and some of the damage to the Disney brand over the past 12 months are all real. Unless we see some drastic changes with Disney’s streaming business, which would not show up overnight on their balance sheet, I don’t see how they make their current projections and would expect them to have to revise the subscriber numbers and/or push back the expected date of profitability.

StackPath, which has thousands of CDN customers, mostly in the SMB market, has notified customers of their intent to exit the content delivery business and cease CDN operations on November 22, 2023. As part of their exit from the space, Akamai has acquired “approximately” 100 enterprise CDN contracts from StackPath.

Akamai says these select customers represent at least $50,000 in ARR with the potential to grow to a minimum $100,000 ARR by cross-selling security and compute. Akamai says most of the customers are net-new for the company with very little overlap across their current customer base. Akamai anticipates this transaction will add approximately $20 million in revenue for the full year in 2024.

Akamai is not acquiring any IP or patents from StackPatch and is not taking on any of their adult customers or any services tied to transit, co-location, or managed services, which was part of StackPath’s offering since their acquisition of Highwinds, BandCon, and MaxCDN.

It is unknown what will happen to the thousands of other CDN customers StackPath has, the majority of which are very small. Some of these customers are paying as little as $10 a month, so CDN services are not crucial to their business. StackPath’s exit from the CDN market will have no real impact on the industry since StackPath had not been a major player in the space for many years. Industry analysts have been overestimating StackPath’s CDN revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars, which they didn’t have. The company had under $50 million in actual CDN revenue tied to large customers with many analysts including non-CDN services like transit and colocation in their numbers.

StackPath was launched in 2016 having raised $150 million and did four acquisitions to start the company, including MaxCDN, a small CDN setup for self-service SMB customers. In 2017, StackPath acquired Highwinds, another CDN with a larger customer base and used their branding for their CDN services. In 2010, Highwinds acquired BandCon, which provided IP services, transit, colocation, and other infrastructure services.

With Akamai not taking on any StackPath employees or infrastructure and simply acquiring contracts, it’s an easy and no-risk value proposition for the company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

It’s sad that most major media outlets run stories with dramatic headlines saying, “In July, linear TV made up less than half of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen,” without questioning the data or how the word “linear” is being defined. Nielsen’s latest comparison data of cable TV to streaming viewing is NOT apples-to-apples and their methodology isn’t clear or transparent. But most in the media don’t care as it plays into their goal of wanting to call pay TV dead, something they have been saying for more than five years. Spoiler, it’s not dead.

Nielsen’s terms are so broad and undefined as they use phrases like “TV usage”, which isn’t clearly defined. TV is a device, it’s not a “type” of viewing. Later they use the term “broadcast viewing”, but you view broadcasts on TV. They also use the term “cable viewing”, which is a type of delivery mechanism to deliver the video. Nielsen provides no details of what devices are being measured for streaming usage and includes FAST channels, which as presented, is the same as TV viewing. It’s linear channels.

Nielsen is lumping in the method of delivery (streaming, cable, satellite) with the business models, (pay TV, AVOD, SVOD, FAST) and then ignoring some services completely like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Sling TV, without any explanation as to why. In their “other” category they say that, “Streaming platforms listed as “other streaming” includes any high-bandwidth video streaming on television that is not individually broken out.” What is defined as “high-bandwidth video streaming?”

There is zero transparency in Nielsen’s methodology and definitions and yet the streaming industry and the media continue to use it to help propel the notion that anything that isn’t streaming-related isn’t a viable business anymore. Sadly, the industry doesn’t push back on Nielsen, question the data, and demand transparency because they only care about pushing the agenda of “pay TV is dead”, which Nielsen’s pie charts supposedly prove.

No one seems to care about the methodology of how data is collected or the accuracy of what is being compared and that’s a step backwards for the industry.

You have to be one of the OG’s in streaming to know what this is. Microsoft’s video server technologies, originally code-named Tiger, (because it sliced data into “stripes” for storage) led to its innovation in streaming media and was first demonstrated in 1994. The fundamental problem addressed by the Tiger design was that of efficiently balancing user load against limited disk, network and I/O bus resources.

Tiger accomplished this balancing by striping file data across all disks and all computers in the distributed system, and then allocating data streams in a schedule that rotates across the disks. In April 1996, Microsoft’s Research Advanced Technology Division presented a paper written by Bill Bolosky, Richard Draves, Robert Fitzgerald (who are still at Microsoft!) and others from their team at the Sixth International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV 96) in Japan.

At the time, Microsoft had built many Tiger configurations running video and audio streams at bitrates from 14.4Kbits/s to 8Mbits/s and using several output networks ranging from the internet through switched 10 and 100 Mbit/s ethernet to 100Mbit/s and OC-3 (155Mbit/s) ATM. Their paper described an ATM configuration set up for 6Mbit/s video streams with the 15 disk Tiger system rated for a capacity of 68 streams.

Microsoft was already working on video technology as early as 1993, when their video for Windows development kit was sent to developers that year.

For my latest “Executive Interview” podcast, I sit down with ad fraud expert Dr. Augustine Fou, who joins me for a deep dive into the murky waters of ad fraud detailing the allegations against YouTube. Learn how these misrepresentations are impacting advertisers’ trust, why YouTube’s reply to the allegations ignored the issues, and what this could mean for YouTube’s revenue. You can listen to the podcast here.

We also detail challenges in the overall video advertising industry when it comes to detecting ad fraud, why advertisers don’t have much incentive to fix it, the lack of clear measurement, methodology, and transparency in reporting and the impact of AI on the market.

If you’re interested in understanding the complexities of ad fraud in the online video advertising market and the challenges and trust issues that plague the industry, or if you’re an advertiser wanting to ensure your campaigns are not misrepresented, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

Research report and data from Adalytics: https://adalytics.io/blog/invalid-google-video-partner-trueview-ads



Google’s reply to the report: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/transparency-and-brand-safety-on-google-video-partners/