Fubo TV subscribers who watched Fox’s telecast of Super Bowl LVII on Sunday saw the action nearly a minute and a half after it occurred on the field, according to the findings of a new report.
On Monday, research company Phenix said Fubo TV’s telecast of the big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles showed what was happening at the Super Bowl more than 76 seconds after it actually occurred at State Farm Stadium in Arizona.
Phenix said they first compared the latency of broadcast, cable and satellite signals from reports that originated with a person who was watching the game inside State Farm Stadium. From there, they compared that latency to delays across six streaming services — DirecTV Stream, the Fox Sports app, Fubo TV, Hulu with Live TV, NFL Plus and YouTube TV — and were able to determine how much time passed between what happened on the field and when people at home saw it via their streaming service of choice.
According to Phenix’s measurements, the Fox Sports app had the lowest amount of latency itself, with just 23.76 seconds passing between the action on the field and when it hit a viewer’s TV screen. Among virtual cable TV replacements, or vMVPDs, YouTube TV had the lowest latency with 54.14 seconds, followed by DirecTV Stream with 57.13 seconds.
For Fubo TV, the results were worse compared with Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, Then, Fubo TV subscribers saw the action inside SoFi Stadium 55.1 seconds after it had actually occurred on the field, according to Phenix data. Hulu with Live TV had the worst lag that year, according to Phenix, with a delay of 60.4 seconds.
While latency might not be much of a pain point for the average fan who simply watches the game, it is a bigger problem for sports bettors who want to place real-time bids on various elements of a game, including whether a kicker will make a field goal or if a challenge by a coach will be successful.
Last year, Fubo TV executives said they wanted to develop features that would allow subscribers to place those kinds of wagers, which they described as “timely betting.” In addition to allowing subscribers the ability to place wagers, Fubo TV wanted to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver real-time odds about the chances of success or failure for a particular play, the outcome of a game and other data points.
The company eventually placed its sports wagering ambitions under strategic review, announcing in October that it would end development of its sports betting business.
