Every Game. Every Goal. For All Australians they promised. Coverage of a World Cup like never before they said. Well the Optus World Cup coverage got one of the two right. It was a coverage like we’ve seen before.
Or at some stages over the weekend, like we’ve never seen it at all.
It is safe to say the Optus World Cup Coverage is a spectacular fail, it is hard to remember a major sporting even in Australia being so poorly covered. There is of course the argument that Channel Nein’s Summer of Cricket sets a new low bench mark every year, but that is more for the in-game commentary of Slats and co, not the basics of broadcasting. For all their self indulgent tripe you could at least still view the sport on TV, with the mute button on of course.
So to watch every game of the World Cup, we did like many football fans did and paid $15 for the Optus Sport App. And as it has been well publicised around Australia, the App shit itself for the first game, and has yet to recover fully. To the point now that SBS have taken over. That’s right, busted arse, budget cut SBS to take over from massive communications company.
The worst thing about the early stages is that there was nothing from Optus during the first game to say it was their fault. Just a barrage of increasingly annoying tweets about what was happening in a game we couldn’t see. The tweets continued and the abuse ramped up. Unfortunate for the poor old Jeff and Gertrude or similar that were left in charge of the Optus Sport World Cup Twitter account, as it wouldn’t have been fun, but Optus themselves certainly deserved every tweet and more.
The rest is well known, the PM has stepped in and the coverage has reverted back to SBS. Where it belongs. Sure, you could blame this all on SBS, as they sold the rights for some of the games in return for a sniff of EPL games, but we blame the Australian Government. Without budget cuts, SBS don’t have to sell on any games.
You could also blame Fox Sports for not bidding enough for the EPL rights, and giving Optus Sport a taste of football broadcasting. Had they not taken eye of the ball, perhaps they could be sharing the World Cup with SBS. Lord know they’d better get the EPL rights next time around. Although surely the EPL management have heard about Optus’ tremendous work and will walk away.
The failure will likely cost them the long term EPL rights, but their ineptitude will also cost them some short term dollars too. For the people paying $15 a month, if they were impressed with the Optus Sport package they may have stayed on the subscription into the new EPL season, or even better forgot to unsubscribe, but given the performance of Optus Sport surely no one will hang around to see how they go over a full season.
And will Optus Sport refund the $15? Of course not. Worse still they will probably be rewarded with the extra $15 a month for those who forget to turn off the subscription. Maybe the government can fine Optus for every subscription and give that money back to SBS.
While they attempt to repair their reputation, they can at least be happy in the knowledge that they have swindled Australian Football fans out of $15 multiplied by who knows how many. Maybe they could have spent a fraction of the getting another mouse and wheel setup for their server.
Sure, it is easy to kick someone while they’re down, which is exactly why we are doing it. But they also deserve it. It’s not as if they are a small start up company having a go, they are a massive communications organisation who should have known and done better. And now can’t be trusted to do anything sport wise.
The final thought is a general one, that streaming sports is the way of the future, and that is a major worry given a big communication group couldn’t handle this event. Perhaps there’s a level of sporting event that should always be available on a existing TV channel. Surely the World Cup is it. Maybe the government should review which sports sit where.
Or if in this situation the streaming service has all the games and the TV broadcaster selected games live, that the TV broadcaster is allowed to play all the games, but the live streaming service can play it live, and the TV can only play the games it doesn’t have live rights for on a 30min delay.
I’m sure a lot of people in the situation of this weekend would gladly have watched the full game uninterrupted, but on a 30 minute delay. It would only take self discipline to stay off social media, not a problem in our world, and a mindset that delayed coverage is better than no coverage.
People will probably still pay the subscription to watch all of them live.
At the end of the day it could have worse we guess. The right could have gone to Channel Nein.
