Football fan cries foul at broadcaster
An infuriated English Premier League fan has gone to the Commerce Commission calling foul against the football competition’s New Zealand broadcast rights holder.
Dubai-based broadcaster beIN Sports, run by the Al-Jazeera news network, last year bought the New Zealand rights to the English Premier League, then struck a deal with Sky Television to televise the games.
BeIN also said it would offer Collect, a separate online streaming service. However, this was only made available a couple of months after the season started in August.
Sky subscribers were also told they would have access to the streaming service when it became available, at no extra cost to the $11.96 a month package on Sky.
But one Wellington subscriber, Andrew McGoff, has this week complained to the Commerce Commission about beIN, alleging breaches of the Fair Trading Act for advertising a product they have not delivered.
The competition watchdog confirmed it had received one complaint about beIN, which was now being assessed.
McGoff said he had subscribed to the Sky package, which he called ‘‘fantastic’’, but the online offering was not made available to him as was advertised.
This was despite the Connect service going live in October, initially available as a month-long free trial and then for $17.99 a month. There was still no online service available for Sky subscribers, however.
‘‘This is what I’ve gone to the Commerce Commission about,’’ McGoff said. ‘‘We’re actually paying for a product that we’re not receiving.’’
The Liverpool fan said this has been exasperated by beIN being difficult to contact about the problem, and for replying with what he called ‘‘cut and paste’’ responses.
BeIN’s New Zealand Twitter page featured many complaints.
McGoff wanted a partial refund from the company. ‘‘What infuriates me is that they are not actually prepared to respond,’’ he said.
‘‘All we want them to say is ‘Look, what the hold up is is this.’’’
BeIN had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Broadcast rights for the Premier League previously attracted controversy when Coliseum Sports Media acquired the rights ahead of Sky in 2013.
Coliseum broadcast the games on its online streaming service Premier League Pass, which McGoff said fans now missed.