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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.
Sorry, read your post too quickly and assumed it was dinner and a movie for *two* people. $100 should be enough, my bad.
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.
He can't prove the problems were caused by Showtime. Most likely they were caused by his internet provider.
Unlikely to the extreme: these problems were reported so widely, Showtime even moved the main event to mitigate the problems caused by the unresponsive servers.
If he actually goes ahead with the suit, he's likely to be counter sued; and he'll probably lose.
Countersued? For what? At this point I think you must be trolling.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
assumed it was dinner and a movie for *two* people
How can you assume this ? This slashdot, right ?
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.
I'm not sure why anyone pays for this shit anyway. Go to your local bar and spend the $hundred on beer and snacks support your local business and watch the show for free.
Oddly enough for this particular event this was not an option in my relatively urban area. My usual watering holes were not showing it (though they will often do other PPVs). Reasons varied between the cost to them and security concerns. The only two options in my area were $40 to watch it at a movie theater, which will be well over $100 if you and the wife go and each have one of their overpriced beers and some snacks. The other option was a Dave and Busters and they were charging a cover as well ($20) with no guarantee of a seat or even any wait service unless you bought the $50 VIP package.
A buddy went to Dave and Busters and he said it sucked. Literally wall to wall people, it took 20 minutes just to get to the bar to buy a single beer, and the place was crawling with cops.
Luckily a neighbor was "streaming" his PPV against his garage door using a projector. As long as you came with your own beer it was completely free, though most chipped in $10 or left the remains of a beer case. From a social perspective that's the way to go.
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.
Most local bars were charging admission for this (or any big fight). Typically $20-50 per person.
Also, a lot of people who are purchasing the fight for home viewing are hosting parties. I'd much rather view the fight with 15-20 friends than with 100-200 strangers.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
Well, dinner + movie you'd be looking somewhere like the Alamo Drafthouse (if they weren't sexist shits). Picking Austin on the grounds it's somewhere I know better than most places in the US, you're looking at $11 for the movie, $15 for a decent burger, lets round up to $35 per person to include a drink. Follow that with a round at the Peter Pan Mini Golf that's nearby, another $7 per person.
So you've spent $85 for a night out for two people, throw three dollars at a homeless person, buy https://www.amazon.com/Violin-... and you still have a cent left from your $100.
Could've been done cheaper too...
"2 Dec, and 30 Dec."
Except there's two periods in one month right there.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.