The irony is that I can watch the F1 with just the rwc pass..

Spark Sport had a very successful Rugby World Cup debut tonight, with almost 60,000 customers tuning in live to watch the opening ceremony and hosts Japan beat Russia 30 points to 10.

This makes it one of the highest viewed live streamed sport events in New Zealand and a record for Spark Sport. We are particularly pleased with the amount of people who chose to watch via the app especially as the evening’s coverage was also shown live and free to air via TVNZ.

Spark Sport is happy with how things worked throughout the night from the commentary and production right through to technical delivery. The streaming service worked well across all devices and the content delivery network (CDN) servers delivering the coverage to New Zealanders operated well within their capacity. Spark’s broadband network performed well, as did the networks of other broadband providers.

That said, we recognise that a small number of our customers (less than 1% of those watching) experienced isolated technical issues mostly related to in-home setup. The only common issue we saw across a small group of customers related to some Samsung Smart TV users who switched to watch something else on their TV without first exiting the Spark Sport app. Our care teams helped customers resolve this.

During the rugby coverage Spark Sport also successfully streamed a number of other sporting events, including official practice from the F1 Singapore Grand Prix.

We’re expecting many more New Zealanders to watch Saturday’s 3 matches live on Spark Sport, with coverage starting at 4:15pm with Australia vs Fiji, followed by France vs Argentina at 6:45pm and culminating with coverage of the All Blacks vs South Africa commencing at 8:45pm (kick off 9:45pm). We strongly encourage everyone who has not already tried out their Spark Sport app to jump in as early as possible and test their devices and in-home setup. They can watch the opening ceremony and first match on demand or there is a library of rugby content such as famous matches, documentaries and analysis shows they can use to try out the platform.

We have substantially increased our Spark Sport care teams to help our customers get set up throughout the day. Customers can reach us via our help site help.sparksport.co.nz and via our social channels (Facebook and Twitter).

dfnt:

The irony is that I can watch the F1 with just the rwc pass..

sm1ff: Sound quality very poor it's like watching with mono. Not clear and detailed compared to sky sports and Amazon prime/Netflix. I won't mention blu-ray.

grolschie:

dfnt:

The irony is that I can watch the F1 with just the rwc pass..

There's some practise races listed under "Freemium". Was that it?

DS9: Only noticeable thing so far is that Spark Sport is running about 20 seconds delay on TVNZ.

larknz: That was explained on Stuff today. The delay is a problem with streaming

It's not so much a problem with streaming, it's a reality of streaming. There is always a delay involved.

Talkiet:

 

sm1ff:

 

grolschie: Ummm... With a paid service (for some) why are we watching advertisements?!

 

they are rebroadcasting TVNZ 1

 

 

Actually, it's the other way around - TVNZ are taking the Sparksport stream... 

 

N.

 

Neither is quite correct. They both share the same source feed and same studio segments and they both take breaks at the same time. But the ads within the breaks are different.

arnies: Scotty Stevenson is pretty hard to listen to. Really wish Sky would let Nisbo commentate

It does tend to sound like a radio DJ when he gets excited :/

enjoyed the ceremony and the game. well done spark. it was no difference for me over the app on my android tv and TVNZ broadcast. can't wait for ABs game tonight :)

kiwiharry: Tried watching via my 2018 LG TV through the Web interface. Feed keeps briefly freezing every 5 to 10 seconds. Connected via Ethernet cable to router.

No issues on my Samsung A8 over WiFi.

Feed on TV now about 2 minutes behind my phone.