As the FIFA World Cup drew to its conclusion on Sunday night, there were bittersweet feelings all round inside Optus' Sydney headquarters as it assessed the long-term ramifications of a tournament that was supposed to announce its arrival as a premium sports broadcaster.

From a content perspective it could give itself a solid slap on the back for a job excellently done, but of course everyone at the company knows the tournament will be remembered for the technical problems that bedevilled its coverage and led to it handing over its highly prized exclusivity for large parts of the competition to simulcast with SBS.

Far from putting Optus off from the soccer broadcasting game, though, it is piling further and further into the sport to such an extent that it looks like all but killing beIN Sports' Australian operations and has already bullied Fox Sports into focusing solely on the local game.

The announcement on Sunday night that it has acquired all European national team rights for the next four years means it will have a huge amount of exclusive international men's matches as well as the English Premier League and the 2019 women's World Cup. It is also expected to snare the UEFA Champions League, and compete for other European domestic leagues such as Spain's La Liga and Italy's Serie A.

Home of soccer

Of course, the reaction to this from the vocal citizens of social media land will be to scoff and bemoan the loss of soccer to an incompetent operator, but the reality is that Australian soccer fans should be cheering Optus on to sort out its infrastructure and go harder.

The experience of following sports via TV around the world shows that viewers benefit when one broadcaster corners the market.

Far from being a case of a monopoly squeezing viewers till the pips squeak, it has proven immeasurably better than other markets, like the US and UK, where rights are split up by so many different holders that it costs a fortune (and is technically cumbersome) to access every possible match.

Optus has clearly had a shocker with the failure of its platform to handle the demands of live broadcasting a major event of wide appeal, and despite its claims to the contrary, it has regularly left fans swearing at its buggy EPL broadcasts in recent times.

However, we are in a transition period from old-style broadcast to the dominance of online streaming, and all broadcasters – Optus included –will get it right soon. They can't afford not to.

Technical problems, commercial success

Its vice-president, regulatory and public affairs Andrew Sheridan says the problems with its streaming were not caused by the weight of numbers on the platform, but were due to a "video pathway issue", which was actually fixed by the time it decided to give all of the games to SBS.

By that time there was little to gain for Optus in risking further problems by keeping matches exclusively, as it was already giving its coverage away for free. It had also gained back some of the public goodwill it lost by appearing to put viewers first by sharing its coverage.

Sheridan says Optus was very pleased with the World Cup from a subscriber interest and commercial strategy perspective, and that it now had much larger numbers signed up to watch when the new English Premier League season starts in August.

The company is banking on its "Floptus" reputational hit being short term and that it can revive its plan to make soccer and 5G its two big competitive angles in the next few years.

"You have to take some risks in this industry, especially if you want to stay ahead. But we believe our swift and wide-ranging customer-first response has been well received by all viewers and by opening up Optus Sport for free it has provided viewers with a taste of what we are capable of delivering," Sheridan says.

"The technology is improving all the time, and if you look worldwide, the trend is towards streaming. Streaming of live sport is here to stay, because customers have shown that they want this option."

No going back

Some disgruntled Australian fans of overseas football have long harboured hopes that former EPL broadcaster Fox Sports may pile back in, but there appears to be no chance of that in the near term.

The Australian Financial Review can reveal that when Optus secured the EPL rights for a further three years back in May, Fox Sports did not even make a bid.

It looks likely that Optus will continue to share some content with SBS for the time being, but (huge) technical issues aside, it is clear that, in terms of content depth, Optus is by far the best soccer broadcaster operating in Australia.

Its World Cup match coverage has been superior to SBS' and anyone who wanted to do more than watch the live matches during the World Cup would have noticed the stark contrast in quantity and quality of content on offer during this year's tournament in comparison to previous incarnations on SBS.

Optus is also far from being alone in struggling with the demands of live sport streaming, suggesting that the industry as a whole is still working towards a more reliable streaming solution.

During the World Cup semi-final between England and Croatia, viewers of YouTube TV's pay-per-view service in the US missed a huge chunk of the match due to an outage, and the UFC online Fight Pass system caused last year's big fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather to be delayed when it kept crashing.

Optus has rightly copped a pummelling for the technical failure of its World Cup coverage, which set a new low point for Aussie sports broadcasting. But its programming and related content has conversely set a new high benchmark for what fans can expect from the new era of on-demand streaming content, which has left its traditional rivals in the dust.

https://www.afr.com/technology/web/optus-has-to-learn-from-its-world-cup-woes-as-its-football-obsession-grows-20180713-h12nlp

they failed in the first couple nights, but it was better after that.

their model is much more user friendly, live and full stream replays available, and you dont have to buy a whole pay tv package to access it.  perfect for aus watchers of the european game.  i hope they take the australian games, npl, ffa cup and the ACL. 

I hope they can pull in australian commentators as well, the english commentary is tough to listen to.  

Have to say i prefer Optus service much more than FOX.

Much better shows, highlights and on demand makes FOX look archaic by comparison.

Not to mention that i get Optus for free on my $40p/m phone plan where FOX i paid $80p/m + $30p/m for the phone.

I hope they really expand and take all the Euro leagues and UCL as well.

I find it quiet  ironic that the same people who bemoaned fox  showing all football are now celebrating Optus doing the same thing. Strange  how people react  when a shiny new thing comes to play

The coverage was good but the network architecture provided by current federal govt to most people (fibre to the node) is pathetic. The NBN is prone to drop out during high traffic times and this is why streaming is a failure. Until the NBN is fibre to the home, streaming will never be a success.

Agree . I was extremely lucky I got fttp and streaming was ok. Not great but ok. Until everyone has fttp and not hfc  and or satellite  streaming will be Hodge podge

And what a war on football coverage we have in Australia.
EPL, World Cup, UEFA international games on on Optus, with SBS as a partner.
A-league, FFA cup, Socceroo friendlies are on Fox/Telstra.
I wonder who is going to broadcast the Asian Cup in Australia now that Langederre Sports are now longer in partnership with the AFC

Why did ffa lock us into a 6 year deal again!?!

Have those rights not been organised yet? Not far away from the tournament...

For marquee money rofffffffffffffff

-PB

Because no one else submitted a bid for the local game ...

Fox and ABC have the rights in Australia

Im on vdsl and it utterly canes for video streaming.

I've never had an issue with my Fetch box on the EPL or World Cup (even when everyone else was having a meltdown)

Fetch was uneffected. Different servers to the app apparently.

Correct - Fetch is an independent company to Optus and thus use different backend infrastructure.

The technical issues aren't what concern me, rather the fact that football content is essentially locked away from anyone without an optus phone or internet subscription.

Optus internet sucks. Everybody I know who has it or has had it in the past has had major issues.

Before everyone gets excited you have to wonder whether Optus would pay 50-60 million a year to broadcast the a league.  Because sure as shit if fox decides to pull out of covering it nobody else is banging down the door to do it.

This could have major ramifications in the future for the local game.

The World Cup is a massive event that should be on National TV first.

Let's not get stupid and convince ourselves that the 'new generation' of online streaming will ever ... EVER be good enough for televising this event.

People will be whinging every frigging 4 years about how its not good enough.

Optus need to wake up and stop thinking online streaming can replace Australia's TV networks.

Seriously? 

Online streaming will be the way we view all live video content within 10 years.

I used to be of this opinion until earlier this year when I hooked into the NBN with them, and it's been flawless for me personally - the customer service has also been top notch as well which is a rarity for a telco.

I personally had optus many years ago and they were terrible, but about a year ago went back to them to upgrade to NBN and have had nothing but positive experiences with them. Their mobile network use to suck big time too, and living in a regional city I was worried going with Optus but haven't had any troubles either

I am shocked that the first post was sensible, and not just blind Optus bashing bs.

Optus has offered FAR superior service - I've watched more World Cup this time around than I ever have, and I also watch more Prem than I used to - simply because it's so much easier.

Loved the mini-matches for the World Cup games I wasn't super interested in too.

Erm, get used to it bud. If 90% of television (inc. sport) is not delivered by online streaming in 10 years, I'll eat my hat. And then your hat. And then everyone's hat.

Failing only the first couple of nights doesn’t really excuse them, everyone had obviously switched over to sbs for the remainder of the tournament.

No issue on my end the fetch is brilliant, but we can never have a debacle like that again, the WC must simply always be on free tv, they can get away with the other stuff as they don’t appeal as much to the masses as what the World Cup does.

As Australia is always at LEAST 10 years behind the rest of the world in this field, you will be eating a lot of hats as i don't know where else this happens.

the Fetch used different servers/network or whatever it was it wasn't on the same tech as Optus customers watching on mobile/computer.

I have 1080p Netflix running without any glitches whatsoever on Telstra. I ahve never been able watch optus sport without pauses/ frame drops and picture degrading to a pixellated mess.

And who the hell watches football on a phone or PC in preference to a 65 inch TV or 120 inch projector?

Just jumping in again and saying the same old stuff:

You are not required to have an Optus phone or Internet plan to watch Optus Sport.
You can pay the going rate $15 p/m I believe.  Obviously if you get a $35 phone plan with the service thrown in there may be benefits in bundling.  You don't need it though.  I watch it on Internode.

You do now have to sign up through their app.  I didn't.  I joined when you just had to open an account with them on the net.  I guess that by using the app/pay method they've found a way to dish off the payment side of things to somebody else (Google or Apple) and that's probably why the content has gone up and the cost has come down.

I don't watch on a phone.  Never have.  I use a HTPC to watch on the TV.  I simply open a Firefox window, log in, watch what I want to.  There doesn't seem to be any "registering of devices" like there is on Foxtel if you do it this way.  YMMV.

Strangely, I had much better physical viewing experience on Optus than SBS.  Caused by some atmospheric propagation peculiarity my SBS picture started to pixelate around midnight and became unwatchable by 1am on many nights.  At times I had both tuned in before deciding which one I was going to watch.  I like Martin Royale's commentary but the rest of the SBS output was close to unbearable at times.

Optus did it for me.  If they picked up the A League I would drop Foxtel like a brick.  It's useless and expensive. It's already back to Fox Sports only.

I've got absolutely no issues with this - the World Cup is just too important an event to leave solely to streaming. However, every other competition can go either to all streaming or mostly streaming.

Glad Optus are double downing with their content. To be honest, they can't really since it would make their position even worse.

If they have all European content locked, then it makes the subscription almost a no brainer for any football fan.

I wonder how Optus will deal with things in the long term with the World Cup - will they have a partnership with SBS for all matches? Perhaps SBS get all non-Roos games on delay except for the quarter finals onwards.

Personally, I never had an issue with their streaming and the content was great. As everyone said, the mini matches were perfect for all fans wanting to see a decent spell of the action. Hope they do that for the EPL and CL too.