Optus Sports Australia

[creamolafoam]

Hope one of our friends from down under can enlighten me a wee bit regarding this company. Noticed the lassie from bt sports has got the gig with them for the World Cup. And see they have the rights to premier lge football for the next several yrs.
Are they new on the scene & have they got rights to any other sports over there?
Sky’s dominance over all things sport related over here seem to be diminishing yr on yr.they have lost the rights to champions/Europa lge football along with some of the epl of which amazon prime has now become a player. Also lost their Spanish football for next season, & are losing a lot of their atp tennis events as well.

[brian f]

I think Sky might be taken over soon -Disney i think.

[michaelm]

I think Sky might be taken over soon -Disney i think.

Disney disnae have quite the same ring to it though Brian,

Sky’s dominance over all things sport related over here seems to be diminishing yr on yr. they have lost the rights to champions/Europa lge football along with some of the epl of which amazon prime has now become a player. Also lost their Spanish football for next season, & are losing a lot of their atp tennis events as well.

Happy to see this company's "monopoly" on football right's and worldwide sport's event's in general going down the tubes - as at one point sport on television had simply become a grotesque money making machine for them alone. Used to subscribe but got fed up with all the regurgitated rubbish and when pay per view came along that was the last straw.
If they had their way we wouldn't even be able to watch this year's football World Cup on Cooncil tv, that say's it all for me.

[Hughie]

Optus is the second largest telco in Australia after Telstra - they are a Singapore based company. They appear to be in trouble with their failed world cup broadcasts to digital subscribers. I hear the problem is so bad they are passing on the rest of the world cup matches to SBS one of our national TV broadcasters who where originally granted limited matches to view free to air. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-20/w ... bs/9891118

[Jim McCreadie]

This on our ABC News:
World Cup: Optus hands over remaining group matches to SBS after streaming debacle.
The telco cut a 2016 sub-licensing deal with SBS, which holds the rights to this and the next World Cup, that allowed Optus to screen all 64 matches at Russia 2018, 39 of them exclusively.

SBS was scheduled to broadcast the other 25 free-to-air, including all Australia matches, the semi-finals and final, but now looks likely to have access to all matches because of Optus's troubles.

The failure of Optus to immediately correct problems whereby viewers were left staring at error message screens instead of the matches prompted outrage among disgruntled subscribers.

Optus came under intense scrutiny to fix the issues, to the extent that even Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull personally intervened to put pressure on Mr Lew.

Optus has broadcast English Premier League fixtures for the last two seasons, but this year marks its first foray in to coverage of the biggest international sporting event.

The company's reputation has been badly hit by the fallout from the technical failings, with Optus previously putting them down to a level of "unprecedented demand" for its service beyond its expectations, an excuse that has done little to placate angry customers.

Optus also suggested that most of the problems were with customers using Apple devices and on broadband networks other than its own.