Good article IMO
Forcing consumers onto a new technology, and then not being able to deliver the product to those consumers via that technology
From the info I have seen, they delivered for >95% of customers, and switched to their back-up plan for the sake of the <5%.
I would rate that as a success. The way software and services are delivered these days mean the first experience is expected to be the worst, and from there it should only improve, and fast.
Going by my own interactions with live sport streaming providers (the only appropriate comparison I can make), this is the best first-up experience by quite some distance.
The best overall experience I can recall was probably year 2 of Coliseum with the Premier League. Nothing but complaints then as well.
It won't change, people will complain non stop, even if they deliver a perfect experience, because it's new, it's different, and victims get clicks and attention.
Our brave new world.
I'm not a luddite, I regularly stream games (both legally and illegally). I live in a household with no SKY and no normal TV connection - all our TV is delivered via the internet. I just think that a 95% success rate is not success!
There is clearly still an issue with the reliability of delivering sports streaming over the internet. The technology is close, but it's not there. Netflix gives a consistent, reliable product. So far, the sports streams have not.
This was the big test and they failed. The rest of the All Black pool games will be against weaker teams so there will be less demand. From the quarters on they are also on Duke. Even if it gets better that's not really the point...if you were Spark going into another major sporting event would you do it without the backup of terrestrial TV coverage? That will affect their capacity to bid for ohubther, major events. Spark can deal with complaints about premier league streams, but they can't bid for Super Rugby if they don't have a reliable product.
Not sure where I accused you of having no streaming experience...
But sounds like your complaints are about the reliability of streaming live sport in general, which i agree is not yet up to scratch. In comparison with all other efforts so far in nz, spark were the best on their first up try, my personal experience was excellent, and so was literally every single other person I have talked to about it. Those seem like the best factors to base my opinion on.
So in my opinion, a good success. The only talk of failure I hear is reports on isolated instances, mostly not even from people who actually experienced it. Feels like hysteria for clicks to me. People love piling on, nature I guess. Look at LG, he's been ripping into Spark day in day out since before they even released their app. It was always going to be this way, regardless of spark's actual performance.
On the other side of the coin, I literally cannot watch the arsenal game this morning even though i pay for a service for it. Sky Sports Now are not showing it, and Bein is not working. Sky/Bein do not support the Bein app - queries/issue reports go unattended, as I have experienced over the last 2 years. But hey no one else cares so that will get no coverage. Thats what I call a real failure.