Sky Go falls over just before Steven Adams' latest game
Another big event, another stuffup for the pay TV broadcaster's temperamental streaming service.
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Sky TV's temperamental streaming service has failed again – this time just as Steven Adams takes to the court for Game 7 of the Oklahoma City Thunder vs Golden State Warriors NBA conference final series.
Asked if Sky Go was suffering a fresh wave of problems, communications director Kirsty Way told NBR: "Sadly yes, those not already on can't log in. We are working hard on it."
Unlike the non-contract Fanpass, available to non-Sky TV subscribers (and outsourced to US company NeuLion), Sky's Go service, managed inhouse, has repeatedly fallen over.
Although Sky has never detailed the cause of the outages, they typically happen when a big sporting event is on during work hours – that is, the time when Sky TV subscribers are most likely to hit a PC or tablet to follow the action. Sky Go appears to get overwhelmed at the drop of a hat. Technical insiders tell NBR that the NeuLion-managed Fanpass seems to have much better CDN failover (the ability to spill traffic onto a second content delivery network if the primary delivery network gets swamped).
Many Sky Go users were quick to take to social media to express their outrage.
A common theme was that Sky should get its own service in order before threatening to sue people for watching sports via Facebook Live. In fact, Sky has made no comment on that front, although event promoter Dean Longergan has been vocal – not that angry Sky Go users are open to debate about the finer points at this moment in time.
Some also posted links to pirate streams or those that could be accessed via VPNs. Sky Go's "issues" have now dogged it for years. And each time it happens, more people become aware that there are other options out there – and some think they have the moral right to take them.
As NBR types, there is no estimated time to get Sky Go back on its feet. [UPDATE: Sky Go was restored with three minutes of the game left.]
The pay TV broadcaster recently forecast it would lose a net 30,000 subscribers in the six months to June 30.
A small slice of the reaction on Twitter:
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Sky Go falls over just before Steven Adams' latest game
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