Heavy sighs all round in my house as the announcement lands – Amazon are getting involved in showing more Premier League football matches again. Ordinarily I’d been cheering such a development, the more broadcasters the better, that’s what I say. Because maybe in time we’ll get a company that knocks coverage out of the park, and we can get all enjoy some real value.
Last time around Amazon made a fist of their games, because the streams were in many instances nearly 90 seconds behind the actual match, and it became apparent as text alerts, messages from friends and comments on blogs etc that my viewing was out of time.
I wasn’t alone, and Amazon Prime Sport’s Twitter feed was blocked with moaning fans, all getting the same cold waffle from Amazon admins about ‘latency’ being normal.
‘Latency’ is normal if you’re watching via an illegal stream beamed via Wuhan, but it is most definitely not normal when watching games via England’s other premium broadcasters.
In June of last year, Amazon won the rights to show 20 English Premier League games on their Prime platform, and the 3-year deal was reported as being worth £90million.
That’s a lot of money to plough into a service that is not delivered in real time. Worse yet, the picture for many people also sucked – and that was if you could get the thing to play at all.
Another factor here is in-play betting. How on Earth are you supposed to place a bet, when you could have missed a game changing moment, such as a brutal injury or even a goal?
Since this place was started, I’ve completely defended armchair fans, because the overwhelming majority of fans do not go to games! Plus, we are also the ones feeding the broadcast monies into the sport. In exchange, we get instant replays from numerous angles and some of us get big screen HD loveliness.
We really expect a game to be truly live and for the picture quality to match our hardware at home. This is basic stuff.
If Amazon aren’t getting their house in order for these forthcoming games, then there will be more to worry about than a few voices of discontent online. I’ll cancel without hesitation – and my games are currently included in an existing deal. But potential new customers won’t bother to sign up in the first instance if they hear the picture’s not reliable and there’s a constant lag. That’s how customers operate in a free market.
