March Madness was one of the biggest media events in the past month (and it continues into April, concluding with tonight's national championship game). Millions of Americans viewed the March NCAA men's basketball tournament games, hoping that their team would make it to the next round. Thankfully, the games were on basic cable, which made them easy to view. However, anyone who "cut the cord" and cancelled their cable bill would not have that option.
At least, not until Sling Television released its service. Sling TV lets users watch basic cable channels like ESPN and NBC online for less than $20. The service has had a significant success and attracted hundreds of thousands of new users in its first month. But the service just had its first major bug.
Sling TV users reported that they had connection issues on Saturday during the Duke vs. Michigan State and Wisconsin vs. Kentucky semifinal games. Many of them reported that their connection was really weak, while others claimed they weren't able to access the feed at all. After multiple complaints, Sling TV tweeted, via @slinganswers, that "We're sorry some basketball fans saw errors tonight due to extreme sign-ups and streaming. Engineers rebalanced load across network partners." In other words, Sling TV believes it received more requests for new accounts than expected. Re/Code skeptically notes that "you'd think the Sling folks would have circled Saturday night on their calendars many months ago, and would have gone out of their way to make sure they could handle demand."
While a sudden influx of users and inconsistent streaming services is a normal problem among the live-streaming services, RE/Code notes that this still isn't acceptable. We've reached a point in our technological development where internet-based streaming services are the expected future for television. Sling should have known better.
