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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.
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.
He can't prove the problems were caused by Showtime. Most likely they were caused by his internet provider.
Yep, because the fight was totally delayed due to the streaming issues because of a bunch of end user ISPs.
No. I'll be honest, I don't understand why anyone would pay $99 to see that. Basically every other sporting event is free......why do you have to pay to see this one?
You must not watch many sporting events if you think most of them are "free". Almost none of them are actually free and those that are "free" are nothing but wall to wall advertisements. If you have a cable subscription in the US odds are you pay a lot of money to ESPN whether you intend to watch or not. Lots of games are not available unless you pay a subscription to specific channels.
You want to know why it was pay-per-view for $100? Because people are willing to pay it and because that's how boxing has made their money for decades. Boxing, MMA, and a few other events happen irregularly and the parties involved vary so a one time fee to watch the event makes sense. Rather than pay a subscription like you do to get ESPN, they simply charge a fee for the event itself. The price of the PPV depends on the interest it generates. A LOT of people wanted to see this fight so the price was relatively high. It's no different than the Super Bowl charging more money for ads than most other events. They know they have a big audience interested so they can charge more. Same thing just a different payment model.
Most sports are moving to some variation of a PPV model. Only a few can command the money to have space on dedicated television networks. The more niche the sport the more likely it is that some type of PPV makes sense. To be honest it's kind of refreshing to actually only pay for the sporting events you actually want to watch. I wish more televised entertainment was ala-carte like that.