Why Is Watching Sports on OTT Harder Than Watching on TV?

欧洲和北美都是夏天, 是指足球还是足球, as they 说 in the rest of the world—is back at center stage.

Nowhere is the return of sports to major stadiums more obvious than the year-delayed UEFA Euro 2020 championship, 哪一个, as ESPN's commentators are proud to 说 during the first few matches "are all being broadcast live on the ESPN app."

Except when, of course, they're not being streamed live in their entirety.

这是一堂有趣的挫折课, trying to watch the first few matches of what will ultimately be a 51-match championship on the ESPN app, 哪一个 appears to only be streaming some of the matches in their entirety.

Want to watch an early opening match between Switzerland and Wales? No problem, head to the iOS app that ESPN proudly points to.

You were able to watch the match with no issue at all, in very high quality and including a real-time transcription (via a human transcription service, based on the number of times words were erased and replaced or spelled phonetically—"ee kwalizer" for "equalizer" in an early match was especially amusing).

But if you wanted to watch the full Denmark-Finland match, well that wasn't possible.

The problem here is that the match ran over into the time slot for the Belgium-Russia, and ESPN chose to cut away from the Denmark-Finland match. One moment the stream's showing Denmark and Finland from Copenhagen; suddenly the scene shifts hundreds of miles to the northeast to St Petersburg for the opening of a Belgian win against Russia on Russian soil.

I hear you asking: Doesn't streaming eliminate the need for those cutaways to other programming we got used to from pre-cable television? 是的，确实如此, 从技术角度来看, but let's just 说 it feels like the decision-making process hasn't caught up with the technological possibilities.

在某些方面, it's decisions like this that make the ESPN app feel like it's been given a single encoder/channel dedicated to streaming the UEFA Euro 2020 championship. 为什么使用这个应用程序?, 哪一个 can have multiple simultaneous "channels" of live sports streaming, 会以同样的方式限制自己吗, 说, ABC Sports would have to cut away from a game if the time ran over into the time slot of ABC 新闻 Tonight about three decades ago is a bit unfathomable.

更糟糕的是, 一些比赛将由美国广播公司转播, 哪一个 means you need to have a second app to watch select "TV-worthy" matches. 和其他人, 而不是转移到ABC, aren't available to watch on the ESPN app without a subscription.

Not that the ESPN app will tell you this if you start watching a few minutes into a match, 就像我试图做的那样. After attempting four times to watch the France-Germany match in the ESPN app on my iPhone, where I'd watched three other matches without incident over the weekend, 我发现我不能,

Clicking on the "watch" button in the app at the 8-minute mark in the match did absolutely nothing. 它在Apple TV的ESPN应用程序上也不起作用, even after shutting down both my phone and set-top box and trying again.

The iOS ESPN app finally started playing the live stream of France-Germany on that fifth attempt, 比赛结束16分钟左右, 但是有一个警告.

你的预览将在10分钟后结束,该应用程序表示, as it started to show a countdown timer over the live stream.

从我的角度来看，这是一个糟糕的选择, 我猜, as three minutes later Mats Hummels of Germany scored an own goal for France—the first time Germany had ever done so in Euro Cup history—putting France up 1-0 with less twenty minutes of play having taken place.

"We'll see the German psyche in the next ten minutes,ESPN应用程序上的播音员宣布, 我的心一沉, as I knew the ESPN app would make sure I'd never make it to that ten-minute mark.

果然, 第27分钟前, 应用程序冻结了, with a reminder that—should I want to continue watching the rest of the match, at least via the ESPN app—I'd need to register with my TV service provider.

在这一点上，它冻结了, I grabbed a screenshot of the warning (below) and started writing this article, 以为我永远也搞不懂德国人的心理. 然后一件非常奇怪的事情发生了.

After the app sat for ten minutes with the registration warning I mentioned above, it suddenly sprang to life again with the live stream. And it ran with the live stream all the way to the end of the match.

Can we please get some consistency in live sports streaming? 不出意外的话, ESPN, let the average consumer know what to expect before matches begin, so they can truly watch all the matches—in their entirety—on the ESPN app.

因为, if we're making it harder than turning on a television to watch live sports, we as an industry need to change the language of streaming. 否则, we'll end up explaining to the average consumer why live sports streamed are harder than watching live sports on television, 通过设计.