Tackling the Rugby World Cup

Spark is the local broadcast rights holder of next year’s Rugby World Cup in Japan. A lot of details such as pricing haven’t been made public yet but the company says people will be able to watch via an app whether it be one match, selected matches or the whole tournament.

Spark has an agreement with TVNZ which allows the state broadcaster to screen selected matches. Over the tournament (starting in September), there will be seven live matches screened free to air, including the opening match and the final.

The telco hasn’t streamed the Rugby World Cup before and there are concerns that similar technical problems which arose when Optus streamed the Fifa World Cup in Australia this year could happen in New Zealand.

Spark is optimistic this won’t happen here during the Rugby World Cup.

“Optus very generously sat down with us and talked us through all the issues they had,” says a Spark spokesperson. “There were probably factors there that don’t apply to us but we will always be looking to learn from any incident like that.

“There are obviously lots of examples where live streaming of sports events and other live events have worked really well overseas and the focus tends to go on the one that doesn’t work so well.

“So there are plenty of examples that we’re learning from where it’s gone really well.”