Amazon's Prime Video is airing the NBA's play-in tournament for the first time, and basketball fans were enraged by a technical glitch at a key, high-stakes moment.
The disruption occurred during overtime of the Miami Heat-Charlotte Hornets game Tuesday, prompting LeBron James (@KingJames) to ask X users whether the stream had indeed failed.
On X, RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) — a companion account for a subreddit devoted to college football — shared a clip of the interrupted stream along with pointed commentary.
When Amazon buys rights to your favorite conference's games, just remember that they paid $20B for NBA broadcast rights and this is what they aired in the final minute of a single possession overtime postseason game. https://t.co/Hoi9zzlnNK
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) April 15, 2026
"When Amazon buys rights to your favorite conference's games, just remember that they paid $20B for NBA broadcast rights and this is what they aired in the final minute of a single possession overtime postseason game," the post read.
In 2024, Prime Video and the NBA inked an 11-year streaming deal that granted the company exclusive rights to air events such as the NBA Cup and play-in tournament games, including the Heat-Hornets tilt at Spectrum Center.
According to Sports Illustrated, viewers were chagrined, particularly because LaMelo Ball gave Charlotte a five-point lead while the stream was down.
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As Sportico noted, Prime Video's NBA broadcast glitch was poorly timed, coinciding with growing frustration among fans as streaming companies increasingly lock down the rights to their favorite teams' games.
A spokesperson for Prime Video attributed the overtime broadcasting failure to a "temporary disruption due to a hardware failure in our production truck," promising a "thorough internal review to determine the cause of the outage."
Several commenters on X critiqued the viewing experience on Prime Video, positing that companies were looking for opportunities to squeeze more revenue from sports fans.
"Got to subscribe to the Overtime package ($60/mo) that's no longer bundled with regulation time," one joked.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 "Needed to subscribe and pay for the two-day fast shipping in order to watch these two minutes lol," another replied.
"They just want the traffic. They don't care about the actual sport," a third griped.
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