Mayweather-Pacquiao fight: Did pay-per-view debacle deal another blow to cable?
In the hours and minutes leading up to what was billed as 鈥淭he Fight of the Century,鈥� viewers across America howled at their television screens 鈥� not out of excitement, but out of frustration.
Boxing fans, many of whom had waited five years for the May 2 match between champions Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, were forced to endure a 45-minute delay in coverage as the nation鈥檚 top cable and satellite providers struggled to bring pay-per-view service to what was expected to be . The incident sparked a social media uproar among disgruntled viewers, adding to already growing overall customer dissatisfaction with US cable companies.
The outages affected Comcast Xfinity, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, Charter, AT&T, Cox, and Optimum, . Customers also reported issues with Verizon, Brighthouse, RCN, and Cablevision. The fight cost $90 to $100 on pay-per-view.
The service troubles led some frustrated subscribers to turn to Twitter鈥檚 video-streaming app Periscope to watch the fight, in direct defiance of anti-piracy efforts by HBO and Showtime, the two networks behind the coverage, .
Periscope lets users stream live video from their mobile phones, 鈥渁nd if one happened to point that phone at a broadcast of the fight, then anyone in the world could tap in for free,鈥� wrote Yahoo! sports writer Jay Busbee. 聽
鈥淥f course, the video quality was roughly equivalent to an old VCR tape, and the audio picked up whoever happened to be in the same room cheering for the fight,鈥� he added, 鈥渂ut free was free.鈥�
The cable companies acknowledged the problems and urged viewers to be patient, saying that the high volume of orders was causing the delay.
The fight eventually aired: 12 rounds of feints, jabs, and clinches that ended in a and will leave both boxers聽.
Still, the issues surrounding the fight鈥檚 cable service highlighted the troubles of an industry that is widely maligned. Last year, Time Warner Cable鈥檚 Internet service provider placed last in the University of Michigan鈥檚 2014 , which ranks 230 household brands based on more than 70,000 annual interviews.
Time Warner scored 54 out of a 100, followed closely by the company鈥檚 subscription television service, which scored 56.
Comcast fared little better, a result that stems from an organization where 鈥渃ustomer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales; technicians are understaffed while tech support is poorly trained; and the company is hobbled by internal fragmentation,鈥� .
On top of that is the threat of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon: 5 million cable TV subscribers dropped their service over the past five years in a shift that, experts say, resembles how phone wires have slowly been replaced by mobile phones over the years, 海角大神 reported last July.
Could this pay-per-view debacle mark the end for cable companies?
Not quite yet, it seems. The fight itself should prove to be a substantial moneymaker 鈥� have been set aside for cable and satellite providers, Business Insider reported.
And despite their gripes about cable TV, consumers have yet to cut the cord completely. According to a , more than 90 percent of US households pay for TV. 聽The media consumer research company聽聽聽last month on subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services; the company found that 93 percent of households that have cable, broadband, and SVOD are less likely to drop cable than the other two, .
鈥淲hile it is obvious that we are in the midst of a rapid transformation... it also seems clear that viewers have not completely abandoned what we call the TV set in search of new ways to feed their content cravings,鈥� David Ernst, vice president for cross-platform media at Discovery Communications, . 鈥淭he fact that viewers still enjoy the habitual nature of television would suggest that future changes in behavior will be more evolutionary than revolutionary.
