Embarrassing: Tiger-Phil PPV To Offer Widespread Refunds
Turner Sports will offer refunds to anyone who purchased “The Match” between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson through the streaming service, B/R Live.
This comes after B/R Live experienced technical issues when users tried to purchase the event which was $19.99.
Unable to resolve the issue for the start of the match, B/R Live than allowed anyone on their website to stream the event for free.
“‘The Match’ was (a) historic event, from Tiger’s opening tee shot to Phil’s final putt,” Turner said in a statement. “Prior to the start of the event, we experienced a technical issue with the B/R Live paywall page that we tried to quickly resolve.
“We decided to take down the paywall to ensure that fans who already purchased the event would not miss any action. This did not impact the live streaming of the competition and fans were treated to an event that was both engaging and memorable. Unfortunately, the pre-match technical issue did occur, and we will offer fans who purchased the event on B/R Live a refund.”
Other carriers including Comcast, DirecTV, Cox Communications and others also announced they would not charge customers who paid for the event. They will give customers the option to either receive a refund or a credit on their next bill.
ESPN’s Darren Rovell reports that with virtually all carriers providing refunds, no one made any money from this historic event.
Remarkably, no carrier is going to see any money from the Tiger-Phil PPV event. Now refunding or crediting: Cox, Charter/Spectrum, AT&T U-Verse, DirecTV, Bleacher Report and Dish/Sling.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) November 25, 2018
Nicholas Masafumi Watanabe, a sport and entertainment professor at the University of South Carolina, said that “The Match” would have needed about 700,000 buys to break even.
“In terms of opportunity cost, they may have lost even more based on the amount of pay-per-view buys they potentially could have had,” Watanabe said.
Factoring in the production costs of the event, Watanabe estimates that Turner Sports may have lost about $10 million unless there was some kind of insurance policy taken out.
“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.”
This isn’t the first time that a streaming service ran into issues for a big sporting event.
UFC and its streaming partner, NeuLion, faced a class-action lawsuit after fans who purchased the $100 Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight were unable to watch it.
That lawsuit was settled earlier this year and those who were part of it were entitled to a full refund.
“The Match” went into extra holes and was won by Mickelson on the 22nd hole. He received $9 million for the win, which is more than he’s made in any season of the PGA Tour.
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