Taylor Swift’s ‘New Heights’ podcast appearance drew over 1 million concurrent YouTube viewers, but the stream experienced a temporary outage.
Similar concerns arose with Netflix before streaming NFL games last season, but they ultimately delivered a smooth viewing experience.
A spokeswoman from Google confirmed to USA TODAY Sports that it was not a YouTube issue that led to the glitch.
Taylor Swift’s appearance on the ‘New Heights’ podcast led to more than 1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube.
The video feed on the platform abruptly ended about one hour and 45 minutes into the stream, which left many confused, since the show had a timestamp of more than two hours.
The issue was resolved, but with the NFL and YouTube streaming the Week 1 game in Brazil between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers on Sept. 5, it begged the question: should the NFL be concerned about YouTube’s capability to stream a game to a worldwide audience that will command far more than one million viewers at once?
It’s not an unfamiliar situation for the league.
Last season, as the first-ever NFL games aired live on Netflix set for Christmas Day approached, the streaming service also faced questions about the streaming capabilities in the wake of the issues viewers experienced during the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight.
Netflix had roughly one month to figure out the issues and largely aced the test, with hardly any complaints throughout the two games (and a Beyoncé live halftime performance).
YouTube does provide the NFL Sunday Ticket Package and many people watch the league through YouTubeTV. But those are premium, subscription-based services with a number of viewers the company – owned by Google – is now accustomed to. (The tech issues for Sunday Ticket during the 2023 season certainly irked fans.) The scale of the Chiefs-Chargers game will exponentially increase the viewership numbers compared to those products, especially since the game is free to watch.
A spokeswoman from Google confirmed to USA TODAY Sports that it was not a YouTube issue that led to the glitch.
After the calamities of the Paul-Tyson fight, Netflix addressed its issues in connecting its backup servers – utilized to account for the heightened traffic on the platform – with the countless internet service providers (ISPs) throughout the world.
Worth noting is that millions of people will be using YouTube simultaneously not for the purposes of watching the AFC West matchup, which could also strain streaming capacity.
The NFL would not have handed out exclusive rights to YouTube – financial terms have not been disclosed but its almost certainly in the nine-figure range after NBCUniversal paid more than $100 million to air the first-ever game in Brazil in 2024 on Peacock – if the league didn’t think the company could pull it off without issue.
Ultimately, YouTube corrected the ‘New Heights’ issue and fans had their ‘Tayvis’ moment. But come Week 1, the company won’t have that leeway.