Netflix CEOs Explain Love Is Blind Live Reunion Streaming Debacle, Reveal That 6.5 Million Viewers Tuned In
Love Is Blind’s Season 4 reunion, which was set to stream live this past Sunday at 8/7c on Netflix, pivoted to a delayed stream that was 75 minutes late for those who could access it. Everyone else, meanwhile, had to wait until the streamer officially released the episode on the following Monday at 3 pm ET.
Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters are opening up about the live streaming debacle, which they say was the result of a technical error. “We’re really sorry to disappoint so many people. We didn’t meet the standard that we expect ourselves to serve our members,” Peters said during an earnings presentation on Tuesday, per Variety. “From a technical perspective, we’ve got the infrastructure, we had just a bug that we introduced when we implemented some changes to try to improve live streaming performance after [Chris Rock’s live comedy special] in March.”
Peters added that “we just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put sort of multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch Love Is Blind.” He went on to say that 6.5 million people have watched the reunion episode so far, which reportedly includes those who watched the delayed live stream and those who streamed the official release later.
Hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey, the reunion marked the first sit-down with the Season 4 cast following a dramatic season finale in which three couples said “I do,” while a fourth broke up at the altar. (Read our finale recap here.)
There was zero reason this needed to be live. I’m also glad it wasn’t because I was able to fast forward through some parts!