Optus Sport World Cup Balls Up!

in sport •  7 years ago 

Dgv6i6NUcAASXzb.jpg


Here in Australia, the broadcast rights to air the current World Cup is owned by one of our broadcasters SBS. They decided to sell the rights to some games to Optus Sports which would be broadcast online to subscribers of the mobile phone provider.

Well that's where the shit really hit the fan. Unknowingly to Optus Sport, the largest sporting event in the world turned out to be pretty popular with punters and many people subscribed to live stream the games.

That is where Optus Sport dropped the ball big time and really stuffed up by not actually having the infrastructure in place to support the demand required from the Aussie sport loving public who wanted to live stream the matches.

So, Optus had to back down and hand SBS the rights back to play all of the games free-to-air...... Optus's initial outlay was a cool $8 million for the broadcast rights so they have literally 'pissed it up against the wall' because they couldn't get their shit together and have the right infrastructure in-place for the world cup!

24dec4c95bed46ee31c99c654d75b7f4-37767.jpg

Thanks for reading!


Make Sure To Vote For These
Awesome Steem Witnesses!

DQmcRhugXJtKG9NtzBxvgVYr7YB5rg2Rvziokw7i8uU88fb.png


Come and join us in the Team Australia Discord Channel

Thanks to @ryivhnn and @bearone for the fantastic footers :)

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Actually it's the other way - Optus own the rights (which they got from FIFA) and onsell to SBS (due to anti-siphoning laws they had to do so with the Australian games and they sold some more to them to offset costs)

Let's not pretend SBS sold Australia out. It was FIFA who sold the rights to the highest bidder (Optus) without thinking about what it meant to not be on broadcast television, and Optus being completely useless, how you pay $8 million for something and then be surprised that people want to watch it is truly astounding.

SBS would have happily paid for the full rights in the first place if they could have afforded them, but due to cuts in government funding (and Socceer being a terrible advertising product in the Australian context, no in game ad breaks, limited audience) they could not afford it.

Shortsighted by FIFA given everything SBS has done for Soccer in Australia, and soccer's place in the sports landscape in Australia, 4 or 5th most popular sport which stills needs to build an audience, that you can still only do with Free to Air television in Australia (Just ask the Big Bash, but then look how Cricket Australian treated network ten, but that's a whole different rant)

I tried to sign up and watch, you got a free trial until August if you're an Optus customer ... Couldn't even login lol.

I don't understand much English but I am a football lover
that's why I am sharing my story of football. I think 195 country in the world play football but it's my bad luck in my country we did not have our national football team. Yes I am belong to Pakistan. If you know most of the football that use in FIFA world cup are made in Pakistan city Sialkot and I also live near Sialkot. So we don't have our national team that's why I sport Ronaldo Team because Ronaldo is my favorite plyar.
Good Luck for Australia.

excellent .. keep going!!!!