CFL+ Streaming Woes

[TecnoGenius]

As reported in the GDT, the CFL+ streaming site was having big problems for many people today.

I texted my buddy when I was at the game to remind him to watch and he said the site was broken.  Returning 504 and other errors.  He's a casual fan, and casual fans will see this and just turn it off.

I'm home now and trying to get the streams up to watch all 4 games.  One game took 60s to load.  Another one wouldn't load at all: 504 bad gateway.  After 2 more tries it finally loads.

Embarrassing and bush league for the CFL.  Any casual fan will just give up, and probably not bother trying again next week.  This is not how you build hype going into the new season.

The first game is a WPG/SSK rivalry and you don't plan for a lot of streaming viewers?  There are no excuses for this in current year.

How many other people had trouble?

[Stats Junkie]

No problems for me. I queue up the games early.

CFL Communications sent out a notice that games would also be streamed on YouTube due to the technical issues for some.

[TecnoGenius]

Riderfans also had big probs with CFL+.  Tons of "doesn't work" reports there.

I think it was Aards who said on the GDT that TSN5 was open, why not show it there?  It's a WPG/SSK game which is always the biggest viewership draw, and they could cut the load on their streaming servers down by like 40% by make use of something we call "broadcast".

Anyone want to place odds on CFL+ having a solution for this by next week?  It's another WPG/SSK game!

[TecnoGenius]

No problems for me. I queue up the games early.

Ah, you found the secret!  I will try that next week for sure.

From what I saw, the problem doesn't seem to be the streaming server, the problem is the pages that host/embed the stream.  So if you can load the container page you'll be fine with the stream.

CFL Communications sent out a notice that games would also be streamed on YouTube due to the technical issues for some.

Ya, that absolutely zero people on this forum and zero people on the SSK forum got wind of.  Real effective communications!  If you use some format no one is checking then it's useless.

The place for that message was/is:
https://www.cfl.ca/plus
right where you try to click on the feed link.

[BomberFan73]

Who's responsible for the filming - the League or the home team?  Seemed like the league just said "you guys got this"

[Sir Blue and Gold]

You're signing up, for free, to watch the in-game stadium feed overlayed with a radio broadcast.

...of course it wasn't flawless.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

As reported in the GDT, the CFL+ streaming site was having big problems for many people today.

I texted my buddy when I was at the game to remind him to watch and he said the site was broken.  Returning 504 and other errors.  He's a casual fan, and casual fans will see this and just turn it off.

I'm home now and trying to get the streams up to watch all 4 games.  One game took 60s to load.  Another one wouldn't load at all: 504 bad gateway.  After 2 more tries it finally loads.

Embarrassing and bush league for the CFL.  Any casual fan will just give up, and probably not bother trying again next week.  This is not how you build hype going into the new season.

The first game is a WPG/SSK rivalry and you don't plan for a lot of streaming viewers?  There are no excuses for this in current year.

How many other people had trouble?

This is on Comissioner Stewie's plate!  We'll see how quickly he moves to clean it up for week 2.

[Blue In BC]

This is on Comissioner Stewie's plate!  We'll see how quickly he moves to clean it up for week 2.

The Lions / Stamps game last week went well. This week was off to a bad start.

[Stats Junkie]

My biggest take away from yesterday is, let's appreciate the fact that we don't have to listen to the Calgary radio crew. I get that it is pre-season for everyone but that was a different level of bad.

They struggled with ball spots all game long...
-    Off by 5 yards numerous times
-    Wrong side of a yard stripe (i.e. 29 vs 31)
-    Wrong side of centre (i.e. E45 vs C45)

They identified the wrong player several times.
-    I can forgive it when they call a TD for #88 when it was #86 – sometimes the numbers do bunch up which makes it hard to read. I would have expected a spotter to correct them at some point rather than continuing to identify the wrong player.
-    How do you mess up #81 (Hyman) vs #17 (Echols), both are veteran players.
-    Apparently #24 Cody Grace did all of the punting for Edmonton until late in the 4th quarter. #70 and #26 alternated the punting duties for most of the game.
-    It seemed like they just picked a random player for a knockdown at the LOS.

Late in the game, they called an Edmonton pass as caught but the receiver was out of bounds. The pass was incomplete with a Calgary defender knocking the ball away.

[theaardvark]

TSN is playing the Milt Chaz High School Prospects game on Monday.

How can they play that, and not replay the CFL+ coverage of the other 3 preseason games?

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

You're signing up, for free, to watch the in-game stadium feed overlayed with a radio broadcast.

...of course it wasn't flawless.

The first game between BC and the Stamps last week was done much better and streamed perfectly, maybe because there wasn't as big an audience trying to watch it online.  Interesting point the Lions filled up a lot of those monotonous commercial breaks with their own action videos, pushing ticket sales and merch,. which made them more bearable.

[DCM]

Crazy hearing all the issues while the Bomber game and the Ottawa game both streamed immaculately for us. Bomber game on the TV browser and Ottawa on the computer.

[TecnoGenius]

The Lions / Stamps game last week went well. This week was off to a bad start.

1 game vs 3 games being streamed in 1 day.  And waaaay more fans interested in this week's game compared to the CGY/BC game.

[TecnoGenius]

You're signing up, for free, to watch the in-game stadium feed overlayed with a radio broadcast.

... By a league desperate to modernize and draw in the young fans and streamers.  Young fans with a 3s attention span who will click on the next interesting thing the instant the CFL site gives an error.

Don't make excuses for them.  This is pretty bad.

Also, consider that last year they had none of these problems... how do you get worse?  And if they were just overloaded this year due to double demand year over year then that's something they should have anticipated.  If they are trying hard to grow the audience, then actually succeed, then they should be ready for it.

Even worse is before this streaming stuff they used to have around half the PS games shown on TSN.  Whoever took that away should also be fired.  5 channels mostly showing useless nonsense and they can't show their main/franchise commodity: CFL?

[TecnoGenius]

Who's responsible for the filming - the League or the home team?  Seemed like the league just said "you guys got this"

I've heard it's still the TSN camera crews.