Unsurprisingly, Premier League Broadcasting in Aotearoa Continues To Be Completely Mental
The final day of the Premier League season wasn’t quite as dramatic as we’d hoped. There were no late goals that mattered, the two teams scrapping it out at the top both won comfortably enough – although Man City copped a scare in the first half – and it was all kinda predictable in the end. A brilliant title chase by Liverpool spoiled only by a one-point-more-brilliant title defence by Manchester City. If you didn’t get up at 2am NZT to watch it then, ultimately, you didn’t miss much besides the celebrations.
But if you did get up at two in the bloody morning to watch and tried to log onto BeIN Connect for the livestreams then you might have missed everything. For some inconceivable reason there were ‘technical difficulties’ going on and countless kiwis were left refreshing pages and dealing with error messages as the final day of the season, with the trophy on the line, unfolded beyond their reach, not to know what they were or weren’t missing. It could have been server overload or maybe just gremlins in the system but whatever it was, this whole incident was a complete shambles and a brutal kiss-off to their Premier League coverage.
It’s not an easy task to follow the English Premier League from Aotearoa. Plastic fans we are not – getting up at the crack of dawn to watch a game of football then feeling like hell the next day from all the lost sleep, not to mention the bad results, all whilst having to deal with being the test dummies for the great musical chairs game that is international sporting rights is a hobby that requires much dedication. When Sky TV first lost the Premier League to an online competitor (old mates Premier League Pass) it was quite the drama, though that service ended up being pretty excellent by the end of it. Not perfect by any means but they did the trick and the live streaming aspect has only become more viable with better internet speeds since then.
So when they in turn lost the rights to BeIN after three years it was at least a leap that we were used to. And it turned out to be an improvement of sorts as well because Sky TV got on-board with a secondary broadcast deal to host two BeIN Sports channels, one dedicated to the Premier League and the other to the rest of BeIN’s football offerings.
Beautiful stuff… however their online offerings were a mess from the start, taking months to get underway. The website layout was far from convenient with live games and catchups and highlights and magazine shows all mixed up and certain games wouldn’t even be available each week, not to mention that it would always take too long to get those replays up there. You sleep through the footy and you wanna be able to watch it over breakfast so if that’s not even an option, well… that’s when you peruse the less official channels of the internet. And don’t even get me started on their awful app. Or their customer service. Frankly they just didn’t seem to put much effort into it all.
BeIN is a big old global entity, owned by Al Jazeera, and as such they never really cared about little old New Zealand. There was talk a while back that they got the kiwi rights because they were trying to build a bit of an empire in Asia/Oceania but couldn’t lock down enough of the others so I guess they were kinda stuck with us, poor darlings. To be honest the biggest surprise about the bland-ass statement they put out about twelve hours too late after the final day failings was that anybody even still worked at that place. Coulda fooled the rest of us, tbh.
Here’s the thing though: BeIN has already been outbid by Spark for the next three years of PL rights in this country. This was BeIN’s final swing with the English top flight, although they’ll apparently still continue in this country next season with their Spanish Liga, German Bundesliga, English Championship, Scottish Premiership, and whatever else coverage they have still available. Will they continue to charge twenty bucks a month even without their flagship competition? Do enough people even care about Spanish or German football to keep these jokers in business? Dunno on both counts. But apparently they’re offering refunds for May on the back of their almighty cock-up the other day so that’s nice.
Spark Sport is about to have a massive year as their Rugby World Cup coverage gives a whole lot of complacent old New Zealanders a kick up the arse which, no matter how much warning people were given, is going to get very messy. The Spark Sport platform is already up and running and has had a few teething problems but better now than later in the year when the spotlight’s truly on. Luckily they also have a partnership with TVNZ which gives them a contingency plan if chaos should ensue. For the same price as BeIN, Spark Sport will soon be offering “Formula 1 season, the FIH Pro League, live NBA matches, Heineken Cup games, Premier League and Champions League content and the World Rally Championship”. As well as a separately priced package for the Rugby World Cup. All of that with an app on the way. They reckon it’ll be compatible with Apple TV and all those types eventually too.
Which is all well and good but their EPL rights haven’t kicked in yet so we don’t really know what they’re offering. And as sloppy as their delivery could get, the actual content on BeIN was fantastic. Absolutely marvellous. There’s a reason for that too… and BeIN had nothing to do with it. If you’ve seen their infuriating Champions League studio shows where that Richard Keys muppet hosts a sofa full of ex-stars chosen more for their ability say inflammatory things than their ability to speak coherently (Jose Mourinho’s been getting the big bucks from them lately, which says it all) and then you compare that to Don Hutchison and Leroy Rosenior’s bright yet intelligent work on the kick off show then it’s almost literally night and day. That’s Premier League Productions at work though, the PL’s production home for overseas broadcasts. They do all that in-house now and then on-sell the rights to companies like BeIN Sports and, presumably, Spark Sport. Funny thing is that we get PL Productions on the BeIN channel but BeIN’s Champions League stuff on Sky Sports channels.
So gonna go ahead and assume that, in terms of content, Spark Sport will have exactly the same things as BeIN had. Difference being that this time, while Spark is still a company that turns over $3b per year, they are at least a local company with New Zealand customers in mind. If they do offer that same lovely content with a much more user-friendly interface, as well as being fully compatible with smart tellies, then it’s hard to see this not being a better deal for kiwi footy fans – especially with the bonus of all them other sports (not that any of them are particularly interesting at this point, but that’s each to their own territory). If they don’t hit those expectations then it might get messy.
A useful guide is that of Optus over the ditch. They caused all sorts of terror for Aussies when their streaming efforts got stuck in the mud when the World Cup started but, to be fair to them, they’ve really settled in nicely with the Premier League coverage since then, by all accounts. Smooth, comprehensive, and accessible – the three keys to any streaming service. Anyone with Netflix knows what I’m talking about.
Ideally Spark Sport will have everything on demand too, coz like why else would you even stream it if you can’t watch it when you want? Anyway, if they can’t offer that then there are websites which do. Websites that shall not be repeated in these halls outside of whispers and innuendo… but professor google is a clever old chap.
I can’t really comment much more on this Spark Sport thing though because it’s already live and the most I’ve done is skip around the site for a geeze. Haven’t taken up my 30 day trial or anything and don’t intent to unless they add a few more meals to the menu. You probably know more about how it functions than I do… mostly I’m just a little nervous to be asked to step into the unknown once more with my Premier League coverage and for the third time in seven years. And it doesn’t help one little bit to know that the disgusting sums of telly rights cash that the Premier League makes means that, in some small way, I’m sorta contributing to Alexis Sanchez’s obscene salary here.
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