SBS has announced that it will broadcast all World Cup games for the the next 48 hours following anger among football fans at repeated disruptions to Optus Sport’s World Cup coverage.
The head of Optus, Allen Lew, was forced to apologise to fans on Sunday after broadband streaming problems marred coverage of the tournament’s opening games.
As well as showing Tunisia v England at 4am AEST and Colombia v Japan at 10pm AEST on Tuesday, the public broadcaster will also air Sweden v Korea Republic 10pm on Monday, Belgium v Panama at 1am AEST on Tuesday, and Poland v Senegal at 1am and Russia v Egypt at 4am AEST on Wednesday.
Fans criticised Optus on social media and on Monday the prime minister stepped into the debate saying Lew had told him he was confident the problems would be fixed for Monday night’s games.
“We know Australian football fans are amongst the world’s most passionate, and vocal, and we clearly understand Australia’s passion for this major event, and the frustration that goes along with not being able to watch the event,” Lew said in a statement on Monday evening.
“In light of this Optus has announced that it will simulcast the next two nights of 2018 Fifa World Cup matches with SBS. This decision has been made with the interests of football fans across Australia in mind.”
Lew offered an “unreserved apology” and said a dedicated team had been working to address the issues.
“We are confident that we have a solution in place and will be using this time to undertake robust testing of all systems,” he said.
Lew added that Optus would make a number of Fetch Mini boxes available to customers “where appropriate”.
The issue of the poor coverage was also raised in parliament with Labor MP Stephen Jones claiming in question time that Turnbull was warned when he was communications minister that cuts to SBS could damage its coverage of the World Cup.
Turnbull did not respond to the question on cuts, but said he had spoken to Lew about Optus’s coverage.
“He was of the knowledge as they have had some real problems with streaming from the Optus program. He believes he can fix it and it will be fixed tonight and obviously as the fans will be expecting Optus to deliver in that regard.”
Optus has blamed the dropouts in its service on “an extremely high number of viewers logging into our platforms just before kick-off causing some systems to overload”.
Feed disruptions plagued coverage of the first match to be shown exclusively on Optus – Uruguay against Egypt – on Friday night.
Irate viewers vented their frustrations on Twitter, coining the #FloptusSport hashtag.
Some fans who watched the Socceroos take on France on Saturday night using the Optus Sport app also had buffering issues. And on Sunday night, more fans complained about coverage disruption during the game between Costa Rica and Serbia.
One subscriber, Skilla13, trying to watch Sunday night’s clash between Germany and Mexico, wrote: “This is a disgrace by Optus. Should give everyone their money back.”
Another fan compared the technical problems to those experienced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics during the 2016 census.
“Congratulations #Optus. You’ve incredibly found a way to make the 2016 Census look like a successful online operation,” Marko tweeted.
The Australian broadcasting rights to the tournament are being shared by Optus Sport and free-to-air network SBS.
The long-term home of Australian football, SBS, originally had the rights to one match a night and every match from the quarter-final stage onwards, as well as each Socceroos contest.
Optus is providing their matches as a package for $15, or as part of mobile subscription packages.
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