'Screen went black': StarHub says sorry after tech issues mar EPL broadcast, upset football fans

SINGAPORE — The Fulham-Liverpool match on Saturday (Aug 6) ended in a 2-2 draw but what die-hard Liverpool fan Mohan Narasan was particularly sore about was that he missed three of the goals due to technical glitches during the broadcast.

"From the first minute, it felt like we were watching a match in the 1990s. It was so grainy and pixellated. Then the screen started to freeze and eventually went black," the 58-year-old purchasing manager recounted to TODAY.

Mr Mohan, who was watching the matches through his StarHub TV+ Box, said that he spent 40 minutes rebooting the system and missed all the goals in the second half of the match.

"By the time the game came back on, the match was over," he said.

His family also missed most of the match between Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton which kicked off at 10pm as the screen went black 10 minutes into the game.

Irate StarHub customers took to social media to vent their frustrations after experiencing a host of issues with their broadcast, including screen freezes and audio lags, during the opening weekend of the English Premier League. 

In response to queries from TODAY, StarHub acknowledged on Sunday that it had "fallen short of customers expectations" and was "deeply sorry" for the inconvenience caused.

The glitches plagued the Fulham versus Liverpool match telecast at 7.30pm as well as other matches, such as the Newcastle United-Nottingham Forest game at 10pm. 

One Facebook user by the name of James Lim said that “there was nothing to watch on screen” during the Fulham-Liverpool match due to numerous blackouts during the broadcast.

Another Facebook user by the name of ShiQi Ng said that he experienced “horrible resolution, lags and black outs” during the broadcast.

“When you sell something you need to deliver. This is not acceptable at all,“ he said.

A user by the name of Fe La Ny said that he had to keep “pressing the watch button” to continue watching the matches on the StarHub TV+ app after the 90th minute even though some games continued beyond that.

Mr Mohan said that the technical disruptions were "unacceptable" given that StarHub had months to prepare for the broadcast and asked that the authorities look into the matter.

He also hoped that StarHub would consider waiving off the subscription fees for this month and improve its services.

In its statement, StarHub said it was aware that some of its customers had experienced difficulties streaming the matches on Saturday.

"Our customers deserve better from us, and we assure them that we will spare no effort to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. We treasure the support of our customers, and thank them for their valuable feedback, patience, and the chance to make things better," said the StarHub spokesperson.

The telco this year won the broadcast rights in Singapore for the English Premier League for the next six years, starting from the 2022-2023 season which began on Friday.

This broke a 12-year streak by rival telco Singtel, which had been penalised in the past for disruptions to pay-TV services.

In 2013, Singtel was fined S$180,000 by the authorities for a mio TV service outage during the final matches of the 2011/12 Premier League season.

Some 115,000 mio TV subscribers had to put up with blurred images and occasional screen freezes as they were tuning in to the matches.

The same year, StarHub was fined S$50,000 after 170,000 of its subscribers experienced a complete loss in signal for its TV channels.

More recently in 2015, Singtel was fined S$90,000 for a disruption that affected 11,000 pay-TV subscribers.