Viewers who wanted to broadcast the Super Bowl suffered a sharp blow on Sunday.
When the Kansas City Chiefs kicked off the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday in Tampa, ViacomCBS ‘streaming app, CBS All Access, faced technical problems and interruptions for customers. According to the website DownDetector.com, reports of problems with CBS All Access increased around 6:30 pm Eastern Time, as soon as the game started, then started to decrease in the next 10 minutes. DownDetector registered 25,100 complaints at 18h27
Roku users and desktop users were among those who were experiencing difficulties. As the volume of viewers increased dramatically at the beginning, many viewers were unable to enter the broadcast. Users who were already watching the CBS live stream had no service interruptions. The technical problem was resolved as soon as the game started.
A CBS spokesman declined to comment.
Disgruntled viewers accessed Twitter to express their discontent with the service:
Thank you CBS for all the access !! pic.twitter.com/qxjJYCVEmC
– Jags (LatentAI) (@javajag) February 7, 2021
* CBS All Access crashes *
Me: what are we going to do?
Boyfriend: IDK check Twitter
– Danielle Chylinski (@d_chylinski) February 7, 2021
It’s not a great night for CBS All Access!#SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/vC9NrfhHHV
– Tony Morrison • ABC News (@THETonyMorrison) February 7, 2021
Me: * excited to watch the Super Bowl *
CBS All Access: pic.twitter.com/B51SpaXqUd
– Meghan Montemurro (@M_Montemurro) February 7, 2021
The disruption occurred when ViacomCBS tried to use the Super Bowl as a platform to promote the next All Access brand change, which was launched in 2014, as Paramount Plus. During the first hour of the game, CBS ran a promotion for the relaunch of Paramount Plus with Super Bowl announcers Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, as well as Ethan Peck as Miser Spock for the upcoming “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”. Additional ads featured Patrick Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Sonequa Martin-Green and Norah O’Donnell. The Paramount Plus brand change is scheduled to take effect on March 4.
Good swing, @b_dechambeau.
Go to @tonyromo and Jim Nantz for his opinion.#ParamountPlus https://t.co/1DDapr6XSG pic.twitter.com/MuceMqQYTT– Paramount + (@paramountplus) February 8, 2021
Although the Super Bowl is broadcast on television, the audience for the annual NFL championship is significant. Last year’s game, according to Fox Sports, averaged 3.4 million digital viewers per minute, up from 2.1 million the previous year.