The EPL rights were never in doubt. Optus beat Fox Sports in a blind auction.
Optus in my opinion had a horrible start and a horrible end. There were a few years in between where it was passable. When they had Champions League, La Liga etc it was a decent service. They were obviously bleeding money because they ran the service down to pretty much nothing by the end.
Things I hated:
- Getting rid of linear channels
- Poor bit rates for live games. I think it was 1080p a few years ago and they slowly downgraded it.
- Replaced linear channels and ability to record with absolutely disgraceful 720p (at best) replays at a joke 25 FPS. Save $ on bandwidth and also ability to make you sit through 3-4 minutes of hungry jacks ads.
- Unskippable ads on 5 minute videos.
- Could only register 5 devices on each account.
- Got rid of La Liga, didn’t even make an announcement. Replaced it with some low level women’s league and then increased the price.
I won’t even mention how they completely botched the World Cup coverage. Gave everyone a Fetch TV as compensation and then ditched Fetch TV.
Optus can now concentrate on selling their poor Mobile Phone service.
I never said they were in doubt, I said that Aus companies never valued it. Fox were only offering 20m for the rights. Way less than what they were worth, and were also giving substandard service along with it. When this all happened, I worked in the industry. I was privy to conversations on how little Fox and Aus tv channels didn't care for football at the time.
- Never noticed a drop in quality of the steam. Was always clear for me
- unskippable ads on just about every service these days, but only Optus takes flack for it. Heck, some services are charging and having ads, yet Optus is the bad guy. Even then, the ads were for like a minute
- how many devices do you need to watch a game?
- la liga was not getting viewer numbers. Women's football was kicking off and has a bigger potential market in Australia. With Matilda's all playing overseas now, there's a bigger market to cater to
Yes, the world cup was botched initially, but they fixed their shit straight after, no one ever acknowledges that.
The last line is clear that it's just an Optus hate thing. I'm no fan of Optus as a whole, but the hate they get for Optus Sport is completely unwarranted. When everyone has to pay $40 to watch EPL and champs league, I look forward to the complaints.