PAY PER SUE
Showtime’s hit for botched boxing webcast
The real loser in the Mayweather vs. McGregor match-up may be Showtime — which has been hit by at least two class-action lawsuits from angry viewers.
In a pair of suits that seek $5 million each, customers gripe that their $99.95 subscription to live-stream the highly anticipated fight was disrupted because of payper-view issues.
Queens resident Victor Mallh filed the suit on behalf of all consumers who purchased access to the Aug. 26 fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor.
“As a result of server failure or other technical failures on [Showtime’s] part,” Mallh and other subscribers “were unable to view substantial portions of the event, and some class members were unable to view the entire event,” according to a Manhattan federal suit filed on Monday.
Over the weekend, a similar suit was filed in federal court in Oregon over the botched video stream of the fight, which attracted 50 million viewers.
“Instead of being a ‘witness to history’ as defendant had promised, the only thing plaintiff witnessed was grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls,” according to the Oregon suit.
Astoria resident Mallh, 27, says in court papers that Showtime “continually logged him out” and the “pictures were delayed, cutting out, or otherwise incomplete.”
When Mallh tried to get a refund, Showtime “made the process unreasonably difficult,” the papers state. He still hasn’t received any money back.
Showtime attributed the problems to high demand and cable and satellite outages.
But Michael Fuller, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs in Oregon, says it was a case of bad planning by Showtime.
“They rushed it to the market for the first big fight ever streamed this way,” Fuller told The Post. “They just didn’t have the bandwidth they needed to have.”
One Twitter user fumed, “My computer has been spinning for 2 hours now.”
Another vented, “I should have put money on not being able to watch this fight.”
Elsewhere, other customers on Twitter complained that they weren’t able to watch the fight on the UFC.TV app, which was being administered by the New York live events streaming company NeuLion. NeuLion didn’t comment.
Chris DeBlasio, spokesman for Showtime, said, “We’re not going to comment on any ongoing litigation.
“Refunds are being handled at the point of sale. While we received a very limited number of complaints, we will issue a full refund for customers who purchased the event directly from Showtime and were unable to receive the telecast.”
The match — which Mayweather won by TKO in the 10th round — was the mostwatched pay-per-view event in history.
More than 3 million people pirated the event on Facebook or through apps like Periscope, according to cybersecurity firm Irdeto.