‘ Floptus’ own- goal as SBS gets games

OPTUS’S great World Cup gamble has turned into a disastrous own goal – with SBS having to screen games for the next two days while the telco scrambles to fix streaming issues that have infuriated fans.

Football lovers across the nation have been left tearing their hair out after paying for the Optus Sport package only to be frustrated by error messages, interruptions and interminable buffering, leading to many labelling the telco “Floptus”.

Last night Optus boss Allen Lew said all games until tomorrow morning would also be aired on SBS to offer viewers “a fail safe back- up”.

He said “a dedicated team had been working around the clock to fix the technical issues.

“We will use the fact that we have two nights where the games will simulcast on free- toair to test the solutions robustly,” he said.

Punters paid $ 14.99 for what was supposed to be uninterrupted coverage of each of the 64 games in Russia but so far they’ve seen more frozen screens than fabulous goals.

Mr Lew said “we have not done a proper job over the weekend” and that the huge demand for World Cup action is “no reason for us to make the mistakes that we have and we apologise for that”.

The embarrassing move to put the games on free- to- air TV came after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called Mr Lew yesterday “to seek his assurances that the failure in the streaming service has been rectified”.

Optus has been forced to tell customers to log on to the FIFA World Cup app with their Optus Sport details in order to work around the problem.

It also offered free Fetch set top boxes – but in another spectacular backfire for the company stores soon ran out.

SBS had the rights to all 64 World Cup matches but struck a deal with Optus, reportedly worth $ 8 million, to allow the telco to stream every game. SBS retained the pick of one game a day and 38 Premier League games in the year.