Don't be angry about itCredit:AP/ Rebecca Blackwell
"I think there is no doubt viewers are changing the way they view sport,"said Marc C-Scott,a lecturer in Screen Media at Victoria University."Even with this happening,I don’t think sporting organisations can say digital is off the table. They still need the viewership,and they need it to be multiplatform".
Yet the question being asked in media circles is whether it will have lasting implications for the broader industry by affecting future sports rights deals. And the answer is,of course it could,at least at the margin.
"[It] may mean that sporting bodies take on more of the production and distribution of content like we have seen in other markets,"says Pete Corbett,a partner at Deloitte,who focuses on technology,media and telecommunications,"or greater attention is given to the delivered experience in rights contracts."
This is not the first time coverage of a high-profile sporting event in Australia on a streaming platform has encountered problems. During the 2016 Olympics,an app built by Seven (which Telstra made available for free to its own customers) was similarly dismal.
Loading
The difference then though,was if you were near a television,you could still watch the event. With Optus's World Cup coverage,the only way to watch most games was online via its streaming service. Or at least that was the idea.
And Optus is really the only entity doing this in a significant way in Australia at the moment. To some extent this reflects our unique media and telco market structure. Unlike other markets,the biggest telco (Telstra) and biggest media company (News Corp) are locked in an unholy alliance,at least for now (hint:it's called Foxtel).