Is NBC Sabotaging Its Own Winter Olympics 2018 Streaming Options?

It happened to me: I was burned by NBC’s Winter Olympics 2018 streaming coverage.

Let me set the stage for you. Just last night, I was at a friend’s place for wine and gossip, and she would not stop raving about the German Ice Skating Pairs team’s thrilling win. Now, I had caught the emotional moment Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot realized they had won, but I had missed the actual routine. (Look, I was trying to watch The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story at the same time. You can only catch so much flipping between stations.) So my friend fired up her Apple TV, went to NBC’s dedicated “Olympics app” and…nothing. It wasn’t that they hadn’t uploaded the clip, but the clip we thought was the routine was actually a Today Show report on it. Then, to actually watch the skate, we had to log in with her cable provider and manually fast forward through over three hours of competition.

We got to watch the skate, but getting there sucked.

Such is streaming the Olympics. It’s one of the biggest sporting events in the world and NBC has struggled to translate it for streaming culture. With that in mind, we thought a little check in on NBC’s Winter Olympics 2018 streaming coverage was in due course.

Do You Need A Cable Log-In To Stream NBC’s Coverage?

While you can still watch some short “highlights” without a cable log-in, you still need that sweet coaxial connection to activate the bulk of NBC’s online Winter Olympics content. So, sorry, cord-cutters. NBC.com is not here to help you watch the games. (Try Hulu Live, Sling TV, or YouTube TV for the primetime broadcasts.)

Where Does NBC’s Olympics App Work?

NBC’s Olympics App isn’t really an “Olympics” app, so much as it’s the good ol’ NBC Sports app with a new skin for PyeongChang. The NBC Sports app is available on Apple devices, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon FireTV, Xbox, Playstation, GooglePlay, and can be downloaded on addition devices via the Windows Store.

How Much More Content Do You Get On The App?

NBC’s dedicated app essentially gives you access to everything NBC is broadcasting across its native channels, whatever’s live-streaming on NBC, plus related content like Today Show highlights and “Enhanced” cuts of big events like Figure Skating.

Does NBC’s Online Streaming Schedule Make Sense?

I personally think it does NOT. If you go to NBC’s website, there are multiple schedules and they don’t easily relate to one another. In one schedule, they list all the events according to South Korean time, which is about a full half day ahead of the USA. So events that they say start Saturday morning will air on NBC on Friday night. They do offer a different window with a full “broadcast” schedule — i.e. TV Listings — that makes a lot more sense, but it’s not the default schedule. (Oh, of which, there’s a third layout option.)

The app’s layout is a lot better in this regard. At least, I noticed that the Roku version gave you a bit of a head’s up if some major event was on the docket for the evening. My big quibble? The app will claim shows are live when they are not, in fact, live. Sometimes the stream is live, but not the broadcast. So you’re just held on a hold screen.

Have You Personally Been Enjoying Using NBC’s Olympics app?

Meh? Here’s what I’ll give NBC.com. If I’m stuck at the office, I can easily set up a browser window in the background where the live feed is playing. Their live-stream is pretty decent – both in quality of stream and usability.

What’s not working all that well? The apps designed for Roku, Apple TV, and other TV-connected streaming boxes. If I’m watching the Olympics with my Roku, I’ve found that it is easier to login to my cable provider’s streaming app and to toggle between NBC and NBC Sports. At first glance, the NBC Olympics app seemed to provide a wealth of live-streams organized by broadcast time and sport, but when I dug into it, they weren’t really offering that much that wasn’t being shown on the network stream. Furthermore, the “(Enhanced)” broadcasts were dull and hosted by less entertaining commentators.

What Does This All Mean?

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say, “NBC Olympics Fail!” — which was the gist of the angry online chorus lobbed at the network during the 2016 Rio Olympics — NBC’s streaming offerings fall short of what they should be. NBC seems to be dead set on covering the Olympics in a traditional broadcast manner. Sure, they’ll cover events live during the day and on cable, but they keep the good stuff for the jam-packed primetime broadcast. While that format suited American viewers stuck with only a handful of channels decades ago, most of us consume TV across multiple devices at all hours of the day. We’re used to having TV cater to our preferences rather than be told to hunker down and wait for Mike Terrico to cut to the next event.

It’s in NBC’s best interest to push to make their streaming offerings more readily digestible to modern viewers. Because here’s the thing — the harder it is to find those amazing highlights, the more likely we are to tune out completely.

Is It NBC’s Fault? It’s NBC’s Fault, isn’t it?

While NBC does have some control over how they structure their own broadcasts, when they cut to breaks, and who they pick to commentate, a lot of our complaints might be better directed at the International Olympics Committee. In 2016, the IOC threw down strict rules to prevent news outlets from GIF-ing the Summer Olympics in Rio. It seems that a lot of the stringent streaming rules are specifically designed to cut down on meme-able moments. The updated rules for 2018 read like a super-duper buzzkill for millennials and Gen Y-ers used to consuming their live media in interactive, digestible, shareable formats. It literally says at one point, “a Television-News Programme which is the subject of a Permitted Simulcast Transmission may also be made available (in its entirety only) ‘on demand’ via the Internet.” (That was way harsh, IOC.)

So NBC is extremely constrained in how it organizes their coverage — which might explain why they can’t upload specific ski runs, snowboarding performances, or figure skating routines. It also explains why all of NBC’s official GIFS are super cheesy stand ups shot in a studio and not exuberant Olympic moments cut from live TV. (See above.)

On the one hand, it makes sense that IOC wants to preserve the sanctity of the Olympics, but if the Olympics also need to evolve to fit in with the Internet Age.

Live Stream the 2018 Winter Olympics on NBCOlympics.com