Refunds set after ‘The Match’ streamed free
Comcast and AT&T are among the major carriers who vowed to issue refunds to customers who shelled out $20 to watch “The Match,” a pay-per-view golf event that was plagued by glitches on Friday. An issue with the interface for B/R Live – the Turner Sports property that produced the $9 million winnertake-all golf event – began before Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods teed off. As a result, “The Match” was made available to anyone who could stream the event won by Mickelson in 22 holes.
“Comcast will proactively issue a $19.99 credit to any Xfinity TV customer who purchased ‘The Match’ pay-perview event,” the statement read. “We hope Turner and Bleacher Report will do the same given that the event was made available by them for free on The Bleacher Report website.”
On Saturday, AT&T – which operates DirecTV and U-Verse – will be contacting customers directly to offer refunds, company spokesperson Jim Greer told USA TODAY Sports in an email. Earlier in the day, Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications and Dish/Sling TV said in separate statements to USA TODAY Sports that they would do the same.
“We are issuing proactive credits to anyone who paid for ‘The Match’ through Cox,” Cox Communications said in its statement. “Since Turner streamed the event for free to a broader audience at the last minute due to technical issues we are happy to make it right for those who already paid.”
B/R Live, in a statement to USA TODAY Sports, said “technical issues” affected access.
Nicholas Masafumi Watanabe, a sport and entertainment management professor at the University of South Carolina, told USA TODAY Sports that The Match would have needed about 700,000 buys to break even. That number likely took a hit due to the technical issues.
“I think that these media companies have to realize there is a risk in holding PPV events,” Watanabe said. “If there is not enough investment into infrastructure and bandwidth needed to stream these events, there is the possibility that consumers may be less-inclined to purchase PPV in the future.”