Prime Video shows “technical difficulties” sign instead of NBA game in overtime

NBA fans sat on the edges of their seats as last night’s game between the Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets went into overtime. That excitement quickly shifted to confusion, frustration, and outrage when Amazon Prime Video, the only place where the game was available to watch, subsequently cut out for almost two minutes.

As reported by ESPN, Prime Video started showing a message that read “technical difficulties” seconds after cutting off the game’s commentator in the middle of a sentence. Viewers missed a Hornets possession that included a score by LaMelo Ball. By the time the stream came back online, 22.1 seconds of playing time had passed, per ESPN, and viewers were dismayed.

“Tell me the game didn’t just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH,” LeBron James, a Los Angeles Lakers player who previously won two championships with the Heat, said, adding a face-planting emoji, on X.

Prime Video’s fumble is made worse by the fact that the streaming service had exclusive rights to air the game. The only other way to experience the game was in person or by listening to select radio stations.

An Amazon spokesperson told ESPN that the stream went out because of “a hardware failure in our production truck,” adding: “Our teams restored the feed as quickly as possible to ensure fans could watch the conclusion of the game. We are conducting a thorough internal review to determine the cause of the outage.”

NBA’s less famous fans were also disturbed by Prime Video’s failure, with some even calling for a lawsuit.

“WHATS [sic] NEXT? THE STREAM GOES OUT IN GAME 7 OF THE FINALS FOR THE LAST SHOT?” a Reddit user wrote in the title of a thread that they created, which has 314 upvotes as of this writing.

The post may seem dramatic, but it’s notable that this isn’t the first time that Prime Video has dropped the ball for sports fans. The streaming service’s 2022 debut of Thursday Night Football, for instance, had technical difficulties, with the stream sometimes freezing, and the audio was out of sync for some viewers.

The latter point is especially concerning because, after four years of this, viewers are still complaining about audio-syncing problems on Prime Video this season. We’ve experienced this firsthand at Ars Technica and have heard commentators announce a completed three-point shot before the stream shows it happening.

“The entire year the audio has been a split second ahead of the video on half of the Amazon games we’ve watched,” Bill Simmons, a former sportswriter and current host of The Bill Simmons Podcast, said in today’s episode: “The three-pointer’s halfway toward the basket. It’s like, ‘BANG! It’s good!’ And you hear the crowd, and it’s, like, the ball hasn’t even gone in yet. How have we not figured this out yet? You guys, [Amazon], have 8 kajillion dollars.”

Broadcast channels have also experienced technical difficulties during live events. However, streaming services’ problems are facing extra scrutiny as streaming providers are aggressively gaining exclusive rights to sporting and other live events. As these companies look to grow their subscriber base and secure advertising dollars through such deals, they’ve also struggled to deliver consistent, reliable live streams at notable times.

For those still wondering about the game’s outcome, the Hornets won by one point.