Martin Devlin: Spark Sport came up short - but stop the exaggerated outrage

The crowd goes wild in Japan. Photo / MATSUO.K/AFLO SPORT)

COMMENT:
Oh the hysteria! "It's destroyed their brand" screamed the headlines, "Heads should roll" noted worthy marketing-expert types.

The reaction and explosive, exaggerated feedback to Spark Sport's Saturday night failure with the WC streaming was both instant and extreme.

The rent-a-quote crowd out in force flapping and wailing and frenetically gesticulating about the appalling this and the horrendous that.

Puh-leeze. Put away the adjectives and stop the shouting.

Yes, they came up short and yes, it wasn't good enough. Promises were made amid predictions of flawless coverage and many, just how many we don't actually know, didn't get what it was they'd paid for.

Maybe I'm reading this totally wrong but what I'm seeing is a whole lot of wailing going on from a group of people irate and upset because they saw a game LIVE & FREE on true HD that should've been being watched via livestream off an internet connection. Is that not the truth?

I'm sorry but there are larger problems going on in all our lives in all our worlds in every household bigger than this to worry about. The game ended up on FTA TV and everyone watched. So what's the big problem again?

I was watching the ABs in a lounge with over 20 people. Not one single person was moaning about the fact we switched from HDMI1 to HDMI2 on the remote and watched the 2nd half in perfect HD. The whole process took less than the time it just took you to read this sentence.

Don't get me wrong, anyone who's paid for Spark Sport has every right to be grumpy about it. And for everyone in the country who for whatever other reason can't get or don't have a decent broadband connection good enough to stream their service, they too have every right to be grumpy about it.

But for the rest of the raging minority, what exactly are you being outraged about again?

For me the only takeaway from the weekend is the All Black performance which under the circumstances, the recent build-up, the key injury concerns, the importance of the occasion and the need to make such a positive statement of intention, our team was magnificent. Of course Spark Sport will wear it - for a while anyway.

By next week there'll be another social-media inspired feeding frenzy about some other mostly insignificant but easy to be lampooned pile of largely irrelevant BS.

Maybe Spark Sport should even breathe a sigh of relief?

I mean imagine the uproar if we'd actually lost that game?

Because I'm damn sure the coverage wouldn't have been the only thing that was then automatically their fault.