Fox Corporation’s free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi came the closest to delivering real-time action from Super Bowl LIX compared to other streaming services, according to a report published by Phenix late Sunday evening.
The report showed the delay between on-field action and the time it rendered on Tubi was around 26 seconds, with a lag time that was nearly half as much as the next closest streaming service, NFL Plus, which had a 51-second delay between action on-field relative to when it was delivered to streaming users.
Streaming cable-like replacements fared worse than Tubi and NFL Plus, with more than a minute of delay across popular services like YouTube TV, Dish Network’s Sling TV, DirecTV Stream and the Walt Disney Company’s Hulu with Live TV, the Phenix report showed.
Fubo, a streaming service that specializes in the delivery of sports-inclusive broadcast and cable channels, saw the biggest delay among the streaming products evaluated by Phenix, with its field-to-streaming lag time averaging 78 seconds.
One reason why Tubi and NFL Plus might have fared better than the rest: The feed of Super Bowl LIX offered by Tubi came directly from Fox, while the streams offered by YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Stream, Sling TV and Fubo originated from local Fox-owned stations and broadcast network affiliates.
The delivery of local TV signals over streaming services typically increases the delay experienced by sports fans, as the sports feed has to be sent from the network to the local TV station, and then from the local station to a streaming platform. TV networks and stations use various products to get their signals to viewers — but the more stops the video has to take along the journey, the longer the delay between on-field action and the time it reaches sports fans.
Phenix offers the most-holistic view of such delay because it evaluates on-field action using people actually in attendance — in this case, people who were at Ceasar’s Superdome in New Orleans, where Super Bowl LIX was taking place. It then evaluates their reports to on-field action distributed in real-time across the different services, which are received across a number of streaming platforms, including phones, tablets and smart TVs. Phenix says it collects 62 different data points from people in attendance and from streaming services and platforms.
Phenix also measures streaming drift — how viewers might experience the delivery of on-field action from a service when evaluated across different streaming platforms, like phones, tablets, Roku and Fire TV. Again, Tubi had the lowest streaming drift, with a 39-second difference across different platforms. Fubo fared the worst, with 55 seconds of drift, meaning some streaming users might have had to wait a full two minutes before they saw a play, depending on the platform they used. Phenix did not offer insight into which streaming devices fared better than others.
Streaming cable like replacements, including YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, typically pride themselves on offering local broadcast stations affiliated with or owned by a major network, which gives their viewers access to local and national news, sports and entertainment. But, in the case of Super Bowl LIX, their reliance on local feeds over national ones — or, in some cases, their requirement to offer local feeds instead of national ones — put them at a disadvantage over a streaming service that is unencumbered by local TV carriage deals, one that was able to offer a straight feed of Super Bowl LIX, direct from the source.
