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Mayweather-McGregor Streaming Glitches Prompt Lawsuit Against Showtime (hollywoodreporter.com)
Customers who paid $99.99 to watch the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather fight are suing Showtime due to the quality of their stream and buffering issues. From a report via Hollywood Reporter: Portland, Ore., boxing fan Zack Bartel paid to stream the fight in high-definition through the Showtime app but says all he saw was "grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls." Bartel is suing Showtime for unlawful trade practices and unjust enrichment, alleging the network rushed its pay-per-view streaming service to the market without securing the bandwidth necessary to support the scores of cable-cutting fans. The complaint, which is largely composed of screenshots and tweets, is seeking for each member of the class actual damages or $200 in statutory damages, whichever is greater. The proposed class includes Oregon consumers who viewed Showtime's app advertisement on iTunes and paid $99.99 to stream the fight, but were unable to view the fight live on the app "in HD at 1080p resolution and at 60 frames per second, and who experienced ongoing grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls instead." Showtime senior vp sports communications director, Chris DeBlasio, says: "We have received a very limited number of complaints and will issue a full refund for any customer who purchased the event directly from Showtime and were unable to receive the telecast." DeBlasio recommends users contact their cable or satellite provider if they experienced any issues.
I don't know anyone with a connection fast enough to stream, so they're obviously not taking about us.
I'm going to spend a hundred to buy a nice dinner and movie, enjoy a game of mini golf, give a few bucks to charity, and then go on Amazon to buy a miniature violin. Said violin should also prove useful when dealing with people who pay a thousand dollars for an "Ivery(TM)" plastic backscratcher.
You know there's some fine print about may not be blah, blah, blah, etc. blah. Basically they aren't responsible. They'll blame your hardware, the cable company, Trump, the RUSSIANS, and everyone else they can. Just think next time before you wad 100 bucks up and throw it away.
And find out who won for FREE? In what kind of Microsoft world are you living?
Besides, it's not like it was two black guys. One way WHITE! You already KNEW who won when you were SOLD it!
He can't prove the problems were caused by Showtime. Most likely they were caused by his internet provider.
If he actually goes ahead with the suit, he's likely to be counter sued; and he'll probably lose.
Unless he's a total idiot, he'll take the offer of a refund.
One disgruntled 'sportsfan' complained
Requiem for the American Dream
Who are you to decide what other people like?
During the 1980's the big thing was to go to a stadium and watch a fight on a large projection screen. Price was $50. ($160 in 2017 money.)
One fight lasted less than a minute. No refunds.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
How did they manage to mess this up so hard? They knew ahead of time how many streams they had to serve. The venue was a modern arena in the heart of a major urban area and there was ample time to prepare. Yet somehow they choked.
"Professional" boxing has always been a cesspit of shysters and they're prone to bad judgement. I suspect they foisted the streaming job on some half-ass outfit for messed up reasons.
We have received a very limited number of complaints
Well then maybe all the people attending the actual event should sue then for the unjust delay to the fight caused by streaming issues, if they were actually so limited.
Ok, so I'm like 100 percent certain that there's going to be some sort of EULA or shrink-wrap/click-wrap/whatever license that releases them from liability for streams that fail to reach the maximum possible quality due to an insufficient internet connection.
Pirates are getting an inferior product. Instead of watching the fight flawlessly, they could have watched it with stutter and get paid for it now!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hooli Clowns can't get streaming right.
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each member of the class actual damages or $200 in statutory damages, whichever is greater
Minus the class action chasing lawyer fees, good luck with that.
What ever happened to multicast streaming? I thought there was a big push for that a decade or so ago so one stream could service thousands of endpoints simultaneously in order to alleviate disasters like this.
I saw a facebook live stream of the fight with almost a million viewers.
I sort of feel bad for the people who paid for the fight.
Live sports is where cable/sat tv still reign supreme. Sit down in front of the TV, put the game/match whatever on and it just works. No buffer, no putzing with computers.
I expect I'm going to be watching it in a theater, on a 30 foot screen, or else as a live performance.
I cannot even begin to comprehend how a person would think that is a worthwhile investment to watch at home.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
MMA events are irregular? the upcoming PPV schedule for UFC is 2 Sep, 7 Oct, 4 Nov, 2 Dec, and 30 Dec.
Yes that is irregular in this context. Regular in this context means weekly or more often. There are ~16 NFL games every week during the season. NASCAR has a race every weekend. MLB has games basically daily from May through October. MMA by comparison might happen at routine intervals but it is not at a standard or frequent time. It's just a different financial model. Not better or worse, just different.
I don't get why you would file a lawsuit for something like this. Just call Showtime and they'll give you your 99$ back. Done. End of story. If this ever reaches a judge, it should be laughed out of court and kick the lawyer in the pants for accepting such a stupid case.
Paying $99.99 to watch two large sweaty men punch each other for a while?
I'm finding it really hard to sympathise with these people.
Yeah and instead we got a pixelated view of what may have been the old man and leprechaun, but could also have been an episode of golden girls.Whether or not it was worth it to you, they sold it for $100 and it didn't meet expectations.
I cannot even begin to comprehend how a person would think that is a worthwhile investment to watch at home.
For a single person, yes that's insane. However, most people get a bunch of their friends together and everyone throws in a little bit.
> I cannot even begin to comprehend how a person would think that is a worthwhile investment to watch at home.
I have a 10 foot screen. Anything less than an XD or IMAX screen (at a closer than halfway back the house) is going to be a LESS compelling experience than what many of us have at home.
Even with a big screen, if the house isn't set up properly it's going to be inferior. A local house with those posh recliners is like this because of how seats are laid out. The screen is great but there's really no good location to sit in the house because of how they have those posh recliners arranged.
Then there's the whole issue of sound. If the sound in the house is crap then that blows the whole thing.
Being there will cost you between 5K and 250K per butt.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Quite frankly this kind of thing is where Net Neutrality is going to come back to bite consumers in the ass a little bit. Who is to blame for poor stream quality in this case? Was it actually Showtime? Was it the end user's ISP? Was it some intermediary transit provider? In diagnosing issues like this which occur frequently in my business, normally the problem is the last of those three -- often a couple of intermediary transit providers with a congested peering.
Showtime can no more make any kind of hard quality guarantee to any of their streaming customers than I can tell you next week's winning lotto numbers, and I would be quite sure that the contracts or usage terms that their customers had to agree to said as much.
There are starting to be some mitigations for this -- protocols like Cloudflare Argo are doing a pretty good job of tackling the first half of the problem -- getting content from the provider into reliable and proximal transit -- but they cost quite a bit. This is already "paying for the fast lane" if you think about it; but it can't ultimately make any guarantees either.
Presumably that is the reason that one would be willing to spend a hundred bucks to watch something in the first place. That's a half-day's work at living wage where I live... why would anyone want to spend that kind of hard earned money on being entertained for such a short time in their own friggen home? I would imagine that the entire point of spending that kind of money is for some kind of special *experience* of an event, not just simply observing it, and you aren't going to get any kind of unique experience watching it at home, no matter how awesome your home theater is.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I was a kid when Mike Tyson was ascendant in the heavyweight ranks. My step-father used to have a few friends over for like $5.00 each and order the fight.
That was back when 4 friends at $5.00 each would cover the PPV.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
All of those famous girls would like that amount as well ... https://goo.gl/Y9KZzd