NESN360 app customers too often get more glitches than pitches
With the NESN360 app, customers too often get more glitches than pitches, writes Chad Finn. Read more on Boston.com.
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This was the response: “We experienced hardware issues that affected some of our viewers. We apologize to our viewers that were impacted as we strive to ensure the best viewing experience for our fans.”
I shared this on social media and to those who had emailed. A few NESN viewers replied that this is the boilerplate answer that they get — specifically the part about ensuring “the best viewing experience for our fans” — whenever they have reached out to the network with a complaint.
So I reached out again, requesting a more detailed explanation of what went wrong, and noting that I was hearing from a lot of angry NESN360 subscribers.
I did not receive a response.
The issue did not occur on the linear broadcast (such as if you were watching on cable). While the broadcast overall comes with its own frustrations — it’s absurd how often the race to get to a commercial cuts off play-by-play voice Dave O’Brien as he tries to quickly wrap up an inning — the aforementioned which-game-are-we-watching-here? glitch was exclusive to NESN360.
And that is a huge part of the problem.
The app costs $29.99 a month. When it launched as MLB’s first direct-to-consumer app in 2022, allowing fans in a particular region to watch their local team’s games without needing cable or a streaming service, I wrote that I thought the price was reasonable.
I was wrong. It’s not. It’s steep, and at that price, NESN needs to do much more to satisfy subscribers than it is doing so far.
NESN can say it’s trying to provide the best viewing experience on NESN360. But last Sunday was the biggest example yet of the product telling us something else entirely.
