CBS All Access streaming had technical difficulties with its Super Bowl kickoff as some viewers trying to watch online were met with an error message at kickoff. The issue was resolved for most viewers, but the disruption showed that the internet is not always the most reliable medium for big moments.

At around 6:30 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, online viewers were complaining about the glitchy livestream available through CBS All Access app, which is a subscription service. The app is available online and on mobile and connected TV devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV. CBS’ streaming slip was being called a crash of the service by some viewers complaining on Twitter.

A person with knowledge of the technical difficulties said that CBS All Access did not experience a crash. It was an issue for people trying to log into the service at game time. The stream itself was not disrupted.

Still, any hurdles to viewing online show that streaming internet can still be unreliable at moments, especially big ones like the Super Bowl. Brands pay $5.5 million for a 30-second commercial and are trying to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Super Bowl LV was hardly the first TV event to run into an internet problem. HBO had notorious streaming issues with its hit show “Game of Thrones” during the final season premiere. In 2018, Hulu had an infamous Super Bowl livestream outage. Also, major internet properties like Facebook and Twitter often experience periodic outages, but they're often not streaming anything as important as the Super Bowl.

In 2019, the last time CBS carried the Super Bowl, 2.6 million people streamed the game out of about 100 million viewers.

ViacomCBS is trying to build up its streaming business, and will rebrand CBS All Access to Paramount+ in March. It's competing with a growing roster of ad-supported rivals like NBCUniversal's Peacock, WarnerMedia's HBO Max, Disney's Hulu and Amazon's iMDB TV.

Streaming is inherently a more vulnerable way to view, because it depends on the TV network, the internet provider and the over-the-top platforms. When there is a spike in viewers, the services can drop. It’s times like those when broadcast TV is still the most reliable tech there is.