Social media spoilers can ruin big events like the Olympics and Super Bowl. Xfinity has a new way to prevent that.
Xfinity's new RealTime4K feature will allow television viewers to keep pace with the game as if they are in attendance, without the usual delay.
It’s every sports fan’s nightmare.
You’re watching a big game, it’s getting into crunch time, and there’s a crucial play about to happen. The only issue is, that play already happened and the people who saw it first are sharing it on social media.
The notifications begin to flood your feed from X or ESPN informing you what just happened, all before it plays out on your television screen. Now though, with Super Bowl LX just days away and the Winter Olympics officially getting underway, Xfinity has created a way for people to stay current with everything that happens.
The Philly-based company’s new RealTime4K feature, which will be introduced Sunday during the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, will allow Xfinity viewers to keep pace with the game as if they were in attendance, while still watching in high-quality 4K.
“The benefit here is our customers will be among the first in the country, other than those at the game, to see what happens at the Super Bowl,” said Vito Forlenza, Comcast’s vice president for sports entertainment. “So we’re doing this for a whole day of 4K. It’s going to be Olympics programming in the morning, 7 a.m. to noon, Super Bowl programming all the rest of the day.”
Xfinity rolled out its enhanced 4K before creating RealTime4K. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, enhanced 4K resulted in a nearly 30-second difference between Xfinity viewers and other viewers watching Noah Lyles win the men’s 100-meter gold medal in a photo finish. In other words, Xfinity viewers could have watched Lyles finish the race three times before others would have seen him cross the line once.
Being able to keep up with sporting events in real time is not the only new feature Xfinity is adding for the Winter Olympics. It’s also adding Fan View, tailoring the Games to each viewer and making sure the events and sports they want to see are on their screens.
» READ MORE: A beginner’s guide to watching figure skating at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics
“There’s so much Olympics [content] on here you can get overwhelmed,” said Comcast’s director of project management, Scott Manning. “But what we’re bringing for 2026 is Fan View. What that does is it takes all these experiences and puts it into one.”
That means viewers will be able to personalize their Olympic experience. They can pick certain events that they find interesting in Fan View. Then, viewers will be able to access a sidebar that will serve them highlights of the events they like, as well as interviews from athletes competing in the sports they picked.
“I’m able to pick actual broadcasts and then specific sports as I’m going through, and it’s going to remember these selections, and then it will start tailoring some of the experience based on that too,” Manning said. “I don’t have to pick things. If I just want to try to get everything, that’s fine.”
Viewers will be able to also see medal counts, a feature that was there for previous Olympics, but this time it will be integrated into Fan View, which will debut on Friday.
Fan View can also help customers keep track of several sports at once — even while they’re watching something different, as it won’t interfere with the sport currently on the screen. So, if curling is on the TV, viewers can continue to have their Fan View on the side, and their watching experience will not be impacted.
After all, there’s a lot to keep track of.
“Our customers said, ‘Well, that sounds good, but I want to make sure I can find the one sport that I’m looking for,’” Forlenza said. “One of our customers said it doesn’t matter if we have 3,000 hours [of content] if they can’t find the one hour they really want to watch. So that’s the problem we’re trying to solve to make sure customers can get to the Olympics coverage they want to watch quickly and easily.”
With a big 2026 on tap for Xfinity, both in Philly and nationally, this won’t be the last time fans get this kind of experience.
“We’re already thinking about the World Cup,” Forlenza said. “We’re building these types of features. We’re already thinking, ‘How’s this?’”