We paid, they buffered
Last night, thousands of football fans, like myself, trusted OTT platforms to watch the greatest show on the earth the Football World Cup. But all we got a loading icon. Yes, that’s it.
When I tried to get a subscription one of these OTT platforms, owned by a telecom giant, it took me 40 minutes to get an OTP. It took another 30 minutes to get the payment link. When I was finally able to subscribe and launch the app, the video froze every half a minute. I kid you not. At times, it returned after minutes, and at times, it just kept showing the loading icon. When I shared my experience on social media, my friends vented the same frustration. A lot of them had similar experiences another OTT platform, backed by an even larger telecom outfit.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. It is the biggest show on earth and the two platforms could not get people through the front door.
Let us be clear on what happened here. These OTT platforms, backed by their parent telephone companies, invested big time on buying the content rights. They spent heavily on marketing and lured people into paying in advance for the subscription. What they didn't do was make the investment on the one thing that matters the most—infrastructure. And there is no excuse. The world cup is not a surprise event. We knew it was coming four years in advance. The failure to plan or invest has led to thousands of customers being deprived by these streaming platforms.
This raises an ethical question. When a customer pays in advance, subscribes to a service, and gets a loading screen in return, it is a breach of promise that hints at apathy and negligence at the back end. It simply cannot be written off as a technical glitch. They have failed big time, miserably. Now the question is, whether they will promise a seamless experience from the next match, or acknowledge their failure and refund their customers. Anything less would be a joke. The problem is, we have nowhere else to go. Exclusive rights without accountability are also a license to underperform. And that is exactly what they have done.
The World Cup will run for several weeks. We, the football enthusiasts, will keep showing up, holding out phones, hoping against hope.
But will the so called OTT platforms?
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