English Premier League on SkyTV

I think they were having problems with the main camera. I quite enjoyed watching from tactical cam for a little bit though.

Sky in UK was struggling big time, wasn’t Sparks fault.

Decided to ditch Vodafone broadband and shift to Spark, free RWC pass a bonus but was a bit fed up after years of Vodafone and their mediocre speeds. Only have copper in my neck of the woods for now, fibre apparently rolling out in 2020. Still a nice uptick though, used to typically get no more than 11 mbps with Vodafone but Spark VDSL is a comparatively punchy 17+ at the moment.

Constant drop outs in feed and quality today bugger it

The Southampton-United game cut out several times and for minutes at a time. Worse still, I logged in on my phone to see if it was working on that platform. When I went back to the web version, it said my profile was in use by another device. This is despite the fact I had logged out of the mobile app, closed the app, logged out of web, refreshed the web page, and waited ten minutes. Not good at all. 

Watching Burnley Liverpool. Glitches every few seconds.

no issues watching la liga and bundesliga on skys football channel (57).

The audio was doing some weird reverb/delay thing on the Man City game as well. Made it sound like a hard house remix

Oh man this sounds terrible

NLD derby tonight i am worried

I've been a big advocate of Spark Sport as I've had no real issues with the service apart from the odd drop out earlier in the season. But after watching the United game and then flicking between games that kicked off at 2am this morning it just seemed very off. 

It was not like it was lagging or anything but the picture quality seemed to flicker between excellent and very poor across all games I watched. Got a couple of complete drop outs in service in the United v Southampton game but that was fixed when I refreshed the page.

It then said I was logged in on too many devices and dropped me out when I switched between West Ham/Norwich & Chelsea/Sheffield United games - Even though I have only ever logged in to one device to use this service.

Little bit annoying, but first real issues I've had. Hope it doesn't become a recurring issue.

I was watching only one game and it bombed out for two periods, when only audio was coming thru, the rest of the time it played well enough apart from every 5 seconds doing a little jump. Pretty crap compared to Sky.

And the Italian League last night

NLD derby went off without a hitch for me, thank god. I also played with fire by getting tricky with it... Got up an hour after the live kick off, watched from the start, cast to tv and was skipping thru the pre match stuff, but it all worked really well.

I had no problems at all watching the Burnley  v Liverpool game.

I heard on the radio today that the crowd that run the worldwide platform that Spark use were doing system upgrades during Sunday morning in time for the start of the NFL season and it caused a few problems.

You're making that up! NLD only went really well for about 44 minutes, then turned to crap. Gooners got back into the game and snatched a point.

Probably not Sparks fault though

Rare occurrence this week where I haven’t been able to catch the United game live. It’s now 8:15 the next morning and still no full on demand replay available of the game but all the other matches are there. I’d ended up seeing the result anyway so just gave up and watched the extended highlights. Spark get a 5 out of 10 so far for me with this on top of last week’s issues. 

The stream botched up big time during thne game. Cut to Liverpool vs Newcastle highlights for about 5 minutes, so I imagine an issue there.

Official response from Spark is that it was an issue with the Premier League's feed again.

Gonna be fun with the RWC next weekend, their servers are going to be working overtime. Could we see a domino effect?

You got that right. Frankly, I hope it falls over. Why? Because Spark have for the last 30 years (Incarnations of Telecom included) have treated their core customers like crap and done everything half hearted except for their top end users like the TAB. They need to learn a lesson.

If you are going to do live sports (or any events) - streaming, do it properly and make sure everything is in place and have back up plans. I don't have an issue with their subscribers but what Spark needs is a loud clear message that will penetrate their self arrogance. It is not always someone else's fault.

I think some of those arguments could also be directed at SKY as well.

Don't get me wrong, Sky are more than guilty of taking their customers for granted. When they dropped their basic packages by 50%, that should have immediately applied to any and all current subscribers. I still think they are asking too much for their movie channels and sport to some extent. A cheaper deal and people will come back.

Sky have been fleecing people worst than any other company in the country... charging more for an "HD ticket". Freaking outrageous. Then when their monopoly was threatened instead of pivoting, investing, and innovating in a solution while that monopoly existed, they sat there leaching customers dry until Spark stuck a knife in them and they lost the rugby.

Sky can get fudgeed.

My Sky Bill went from $66 to $91 without me being consulted. Sky Cnuts why are you still charging established customers $50 per month instead of $25 like the newbies? Sort the shark out please. $25 for Sky Sports? & $25 for Sky Basic. and I am happy.

Update. My bill is $91. I am paying for Starter, Entertain, My Sky & Sky Sport. There are no discounts for long term customers. They are offering though, a deal for Sky Sports but you cannot have been subscribed to it for 1 month or longer. Should I leave Sky, I cannot rejoin on a special deal for at least 3 months. I queried, if I left today and rejoined tomorrow, could I get the $25 starter and Sky Sports - they said I have to be without any form of Sky for 3 months to get that. 

And they wonder why they lost 40,000 customers and increasing? I am sure I am not the only one thinking that as a good provider, Sky would have automatically dropped their current clients on basic down to the $25 per month, they offered newbies. 

Meanwhile on Wish.com & Ali Express, Android based box sets for TV's are an interesting read. Along with Apple TV for those that way inclined.

SKY have not had the rugby world cup more times than they have had it so not sure that should be the central piece of evidence in your argument.

My main criticism of Sky has been how long they've taken to react in a transforming market. 

I have changed my tune a bit on other things. With hindsight I can understand some of the other stuff that I used to get annoyed about. 

It used to be hard to tell how well priced the services really were, given the monopolistic nature, but I think the price of streaming in today's market has shown that Sky were actually pretty fairly priced overall, in my opinion. 

Charging regular fees for HD is taking the p*ss a bit, but outside of that I can't really be too critical of them. They've served me well over the years. 

I was quite scathing a while back because of Fellet's poor adoption of new technology, and lack of attention to changing consumer demands, but that has gone now with the new management and general direction. It's quite refreshing, good luck to them in the newly competitive market. 

all fair, and I think now we as consumers are realizing how "good" we had it with sky for all those years. I think with the new CEO things will change for the better.

That Sky are dickheads? Plenty of other sports in the world...

My argument is that they refused to innovate and improve and sat there whoring their monopoly instead.

Spark are getting their excuses in early. Blame the customers. Great move. I am sure the rugby die hards who live in semi rural or rural NZ will really appreciate being sold a lemon and then blamed for it. 

I think SKY's pricing can only be considered 'good' if you like a bit of all sports.  If you are like me and tend to only focus on a few sports (and in my case hate with a passion rugby) then it is a massive ripoff.  Coliseum changing the market place for the EPL has been magic and I hope it continues.

New user here, have been lurking on this site for a while though

I would like to ask about the sky coverage of football? What leagues do you get? It seems bein is no longer a thing

Currently have spark and am using youtube for a league but might give sky a go

My point was following this statement you made:

they sat there leaching customers dry until Spark stuck a knife in them and they lost the rugby.

Sky has La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A, the Championship, Scottish Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, European internationals (EURO qualifying at the moment), MLS, and the A-league.

Losing the rugby world cup, premier league, and formula 1 to a single company is a pretty good knife. How deep that knife goes who knows, but that's 3 significant sets of fans that need to invest in SparkSport and if it goes well, Sky will be left chasing the game.

Decent lineup, might have to get sky again sadly

It is a very good lineup. Tend to only have 1-2 games per week of most of those leagues, but that’s enough for most people. 

Shame that Spark lost their bottle and chucked the Springboks game up on Duke. Guess it was inevitable really, had to head off a PR sharkstorm. For what it's worth I had a decent enough experience, three or four slight buffering episodes in the first half and a couple in the second. But nothing major. To be fair I'm not sure how representative that is though, if loads of people had issues despite having adequate internet, then shame on Spark. 

Re: sky, a bit shark that last year they had Serie A stuff on the regular channels separate from the now defunct standalone Bein channel, but now it only seems to be scheduled on the Sky Sport 7/Bein channel hence clashing with Bundesliga and La Liga so less live games are shown. 

Really enjoyed the rugby comms with Stevenson and Donald, far less stale than the Sky comms which is technically fine but feels rather stale with Marshall et al calling what feels like their 500th test match every time.

Judging by the number of complaints on "Stuff" I'd say if affected more than "a few customers". Some are seething after having spent several hundred dollars to have their gear at home all up and running properly, only find out it was on Duke because of a Spark "fail".