Rugby World Cup Streaming Service Seeks to Allay Kiwis’ Fury

(Bloomberg) -- Spark Sport is seeking to appease rugby-obsessed New Zealanders who are furious at technical glitches that plagued its streaming service during the defending World Cup champion’s opening game at this year’s tournament.

The company decided to allow free-to-air coverage over TVNZ for some of Saturday’s 23-13 New Zealand victory over South Africa in Japan after video quality issues. All of Sunday’s games will also be available on terrestrial television, Spark Sport said.

“Following technical investigations overnight and this morning, Spark Sport is making configuration changes to the way the video stream comes into New Zealand,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We believe this will resolve the video quality issues experienced by some customers intermittently during the All Blacks v South Africa match last night.”

Images of Saturday’s game were flickering, pixelating, blurring and buffering for customers, with some completely losing the signal, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Spark Sport apologized about the quality issues and reiterated its willingness to offer refunds to dissatisfied customers, it said in a Twitter post on Sunday.

--With assistance from Tracy Withers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Garfield Reynolds in Sydney at greynolds1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Stanley James

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