Fan fury at Optus World Cup app livestream glitch

Optus’s move to deliver the 2018 World Cup to the public hit a major hurdle last night, with its app going out of commission.

Optus World Cup 2018 app marketing.

Optus’s move to deliver the 2018 World Cup to the public hit a major hurdle last night, with the telco’s purpose-built app going out of commission.

Viewers signed up to see the second match of the tournament, between Egypt and Uruguay, were stuck with frozen screens as the livestream went out of commission mid-match.

They vented their frustrations on Twitter, with the @OptusSport account tweeting match updates but fans complaining they could not see the livestream.

Hey #Optus...the only player I'm seeing in your World Cup coverage is one called BUFFERING. Fix it. #FifaWorldCup2018

— Julian Schiller (@Julesschiller) June 15, 2018

I hear the streaming is going well ! Absolute disgrace ! Long month ahead ! If you going to have it deliver it !

— Robbie Slater (@RobbieSlater17) June 15, 2018

Dear @SenatorFifield @TurnbullMalcolm @billshortenmp @MRowlandMP act now and please make SBS take the #WorldCup games that they sold to @OptusSport back. The Optus stream drops out constantly,leaving many football fans unable to watch the games due to this streaming 'service'.

— Lawrence Champness (@champy) June 15, 2018

Optus cant handle a #EGY v #URU stream. Four Round of 16 and two Quarter Finals are exclusive to them.....god help us! #Optus #WorldCup #EGYURU

— Adam Santarossa (@adamsantarossa) June 15, 2018

Midway through the second half the stream was back up but still appeared intermittent.

The glitch is a major embarrassment for Optus, which aggressively chased exclusive deals to the 2018 World Cup tournament as well as English Premier League.

While Optus customers have free access to the Optus Sport app, it is charging $15 a month to Telstra and Vodafone customers to watch the games.

The telco has also sub-licenced rights to show 25 of the matches to SBS, including one live match per day and all Australian matches. The deal also secures the free-to-air broadcast of four matches from the round of 16, two quarter finals, both semi-finals and the final.

An Optus spokesperson said the crashes were due to “an extremely high number of viewers logging into our platforms just before kick-off causing some systems to overload.”

“While most customers on most platforms were unaffected, we apologise unreservedly to those customers who were, and are continuing to investigate the cause of these systems issues,” an Optus statement read.

— with AAP