Football fans live streaming Euro 2024 games have been warned that they could be nearly a minute behind celebrating a goal.
- Uswitch finds five million streamers will be affected by Euro 2024 lag.
- Broadcasters have been trying to reduce latency.
- But problem is getting worse as more homes ditch the aerial or dish.
Comparison site Uswitch has recommended viewers plug their TV aerial into their smart TV to avoid being late to the party when watching Euro 2024 football live.
Their research has found up to five million people are at risk of a live TV lag spoiling live sport. Affected viewers might receive a notification on their phone before they see the goal on their TV. As RXTV has previously reported before the 2022 World Cup, streamers might even hear their neighbours celebrating a goal they’ve yet to witness.
Uswitch says that when watching a live broadcast via streaming, programmes are shown as much as 45 seconds later compared with traditional TV. A quick fix is to simply plug in an aerial cable (providing you have a TV aerial) or connect to a satellite dish to watch BBC One or ITV1 (or STV in Central/Northern Scotland) on channel 1/101 or 3/103.
If you are reliant on streaming, Uswitch recommends fans mute notifications on their phones to avoid spoilers.
Problem that is getting worse…
The problem with streaming TV lagging behind digital terrestrial (Freeview) and satellite (Sky Q/Freesat) is only getting worse, as more households become ‘internet only’ TV homes, ditching the TV aerial or satellite dish completely and connecting their smart TV to wifi or an ethernet cable to their router.
Five million homes, up from four million last summer, are now in that category.
How far are you behind on the action?
The Euro 2024 live lag will vary considerably depending on how you watch or listen to the action.
In fact, BBC Radio 5 Live listeners on 693/909 MW will enjoy the closest to live action.
| Broadcast platform | Average Delay |
|---|---|
| Analogue radio (FM/MW) | Near instantaneous |
| Digital radio (DAB) | Between one and two seconds |
| Satellite TV (Sky Q/Freesat) | Between 0.9 and 2.2 seconds |
| Digital Terrestrial Television (Freeview) | More than one second |
| Cable Television (Virgin Media) | About five seconds |
| Streaming (e.g. Sky Stream) | Between 10 and 45 seconds |
Why is live streaming not really live?
Online services suffer particularly from delays as there’s so many different elements between the broadcaster and the streamer that can affect speeds. Factors include network speeds and the processing power of your device.
On satellite or terrestrial, you’re receiving a signal coming from a transmitter or satellite to your home’s aerial or dish in a straight line.
Via the internet, the stream must pass through different parts of the internet, via content delivery networks and your ISP through to your router and the device you’re watching on. An overloaded device trying to do multiple tasks – e.g. work and live streaming may struggle, causing buffering.
Freely requires a minimum broadband speed of 10Mbps while Sky Glass/Stream needs 25Mbps. However, the lag will remain, regardless of how fast your home connection is because of the factors listed above.
Forbes found the delay between Sky satellite and Sky Glass was around 45 seconds.
What are broadcasters doing about the lag?
But broadcasters and platform operators are trying to reduce lagging as much as they can.
Ahead of the last Euros, Swiss streamer Zattoo managed to reduce the lag by 25 seconds, but only for viewers accessing that service on certain devices.
Sky recently announced it was working to reduce the lag by creating a low latency version of Sky Sports Main Event for Sky Glass and Sky Stream. This will reduce the lag by 20 seconds.
So what about Euro 2024? RXTV recently compared BBC iPlayer and ITVX – the two streaming services that will carry the live action* – when BBC One and ITV1 were both broadcasting Rishi Sunak’s rain drenched General Election announcement. The live stream of ITV1 was 10 seconds ahead of the BBC One iPlayer live stream.
*Viewers with a postcode in STV’s broadcast region will be able to live stream Euro 2024 action via the STV Player.
By: Marc Thornham | Image: Euro 2024 on ITVX – Screengrab