The Red Sox might make the playoffs. They probably won’t. But at least this can already be said for their 2024 edition: They’re an athletic, unified, and resilient team, which more often than not has made them fun to watch.
Which makes it even more frustrating that NESN — specifically its glitchy standalone NESN360 app — too often interferes with the enjoyment of watching them with its apparent indifference to the quality and reliability of the product.
The most egregious example occurred last Sunday, when NESN360 went on the fritz late in
the Red Sox’ fairly important game with the Orioles.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, with the Red Sox trailing, 4-0, the broadcast began jumping back and forth to the first inning of an old game.
One second, Red Sox pitcher
Bailey Horn was on the mound in Sunday’s live action, trying to hold off the Orioles in that seventh inning. A few seconds later, it would jump to the first inning of Friday’s game, with Orioles pitcher
Corbin Burnes on the mound.
This continued to the point that it was impossible to watch, even if you had the game on as background noise, as I did.
After receiving a deluge of complaints on social media and via email, I reached out to a NESN spokesperson to ask if there was an explanation for what was happening.
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.
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.