Spark’s dress rehearsal for Rugby World Cup

Spark’s coup in scoring the English Premier League rights gives the company a key testing ground ahead of the Rugby World Cup.

The recent hash-up across the ditch, where Optus angered a nation by failing to deliver a working stream during the Fifa World Cup, sent a stern warning to Spark about the risks involved with sporting events of national significance.

The inability of Optus to sort out its streaming woes led to the telco sheepishly handing over the rights to the rest of the tournament to broadcaster SBS, which gleefully took over the responsibility.

At a time when we are told streaming is the future of sports broadcasts, this felt a bit like calling your grandfather to save you from a bar fight. TVNZ will no doubt similarly acquiesce to stepping into the ring and knocking out the buffering should it be required during the Rugby World Cup.

But the English football tournament will give Spark months to tweak its platform, iron out glitches, and ensure it delivers a service worth paying for.

Rather than leaping off the couch into a marathon, Spark is setting itself up for a weekly training regime to prepare the company for delivering sports streams to football fans over the course of the season.

While it would prefer to avoid mishaps, Spark would rather see a stream fail during a match-up between Manchester City and Huddersfield than, say, a match featuring the All Blacks and the Springboks. There might be some fallout if Spark’s streams were to fail during some of bigger football matches, but that doesn’t compare to infuriating a rugby-mad nation during an event they waited four years for.

The lead-up to the World Cup will also provide an opportunity for Spark to familiarise audiences with a platform that does not yet exist.

Spark will want to make its content accessible across as many devices as possible, which will mean developing apps compatible with smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and gaming consoles. The company will be able to identify and exterminate gremlins before the Rugby World Cup opener on September 20, 2019.

Finally, it will give Spark the chance to experiment with contingency plans for the worst-case scenario of streams dropping out during key matches. Spark will have to get creative to ensure it doesn’t repeat the mistakes of Optus. Get it wrong and it’s unlikely World Rugby will trust the telco with its hallowed tournament again, no matter how much cash is on the negotiating table.