Manchester United's Marcus Rashford celebrates after scoring against Liverpool. Photo / AP
OPINON:
The streaming era has started to feel a lot like a reboot.
Netflix is getting ads soon. The film industry, completely disrupted by streaming services, has devolved into betting big on old remakes that privilege mindless nostalgia over telling unique stories. The so-called democratisation of music onto Spotify has made almost the entire library of sounds available in your pocket, while further exploiting artists and homogenising new music through broken algorithmic incentives.
The financial freedom promised by streaming has quickly become an increasingly expensive smorgasbord of multiple subscriptions. Sport, at least in New Zealand, seems to be one of the few areas of entertainment that persists through the streaming age.
The live aspect of sport continues to be one of the last remaining monoculture – and when it comes to live sport, Sky TV is still the best in the business.
This month, the Premier League returned to Sky after four years of the 'home of sport' without football's most popular competition. Spark Sport, the streaming disrupter that changed New Zealand sports TV for the better by breaking a virtual monopoly, ended up being a reliable host for football fans, with its intuitive app and on-demand freedom – at least after a few early stumbles.
It sparked anxiety about the Premier League's return to Sky for the streaming savvy, especially due to the usefulness of watching on-demand because of time zone differences.
Sky's streaming service, Sky Sport Now, had a slightly outdated platform that lacked the user-friendliness and on-demand options of its competitor.
Two weeks into the Premier League season, Sky TV dropped its big streaming reboot, with a redesign and additions of key features like "watch from start/watch from live".
However, the late arrival of the upgrade did suffer from some teething issues.
Here is the good, the bad and the ugly of the new Sky Sport Now:
The new look of Sky Sport Now across the web, smartphone and smart TV apps is more aesthetically pleasing than the previous almost bleak user interface.
But aside from the design upgrade, the streaming options are finally significantly boosted, from the addition of the aforementioned "watch from live" feature (it now automatically plays from the start as opposed to joining the action live to avoid spoilers), to other useful features like a quick 30-second replay button if you missed a key moment and 'multi-view' which allows you to watch up to four live channels at once on the web app. However, the multi-view option doesn't seem to be available on the smartphone and smart TV apps, which would be handy.
The streaming itself, anecdotally anyway, also feels a lot smoother, although the update has taken away the ability to manually change streaming quality.
From a Premier League point of view, the highlight packages of individual matches appear, so far, to be better than Spark Sport's offering, which was often cut in strange ways with audio sync issues.
Overall, the web app is significantly improved, but is probably the least used option for most fans. The smartphone app used to be the best way to navigate the complicated streaming platform and continues to do a decent job while remaining one of the best ways to stream sport on your TV, via Google Chromecast. The smart TV app, Samsung in my case, has also improved in general from a user-friendliness standpoint.
However, the revamped streaming service is still far from perfect.
As previously mentioned, there were several glitches as the Sky Sport Now upgrade went live last week, timed poorly right before Manchester United vs Liverpool, perhaps the biggest match of the year so far. The Samsung TV app wasn't working in time for the match due to a delay, which also wasn't ideal.
However, the main issue with Sky Sport Now remains its over-complicated user interface. It's way more difficult than it should be to find what you're looking for on the app – across every medium – and continues to be the most frustrating app I've used across any form of streaming entertainment.
The upgrades have also taken away some useful features, like skipping forward 10 seconds which makes it harder to catch up to live when you're watching on delay. There also seems to be a lack of consistency between the functionality of the web, smartphone and smart TV apps.
A golf fan who uses Sky Sport Now on the web app pointed out to me that: "Golf is now impossible to watch on delay on Sky Sport Now. How are you supposed to watch five hours of golf without the 10 second fast forward button?"
While you can view up to 24 hours of past content on the 'TV guide' section of the app, replays and highlights still take too long to arrive, which has been a big sticking point for football fans since the return of the Premier League.
Hi @skysportnz it's nearly 7am, why is none of the on-demand content (replays/highlights) available for any of the games other than SOU v MUN? It's been hours. Is this really an on-demand service?
— Cam (@RedFromNZ) August 27, 2022
The breadth of content available remains its strong point, and provides challenges when presenting it all as a streaming platform, but the app could be a lot better and more intuitive – and many others seem to agree.
Sky Sport Now is still the most expensive sports streaming platform in New Zealand, which makes sense because of its unrivalled sports offering. But it makes following the Premier League now more expensive for football fans. Sky Sport Now costs $39.99/month to Spark Sport's $24.99/month, but Sky's sports offering is significantly better than Spark's.
Questions about Spark Sport's future remain, especially since it lost the Premier League and now only boasts UEFA football, New Zealand cricket and F1 as its main attractions. However, Sky's inability or refusal to innovate and adapt to consumer needs – a much-derided feature of its monopoly and satellite box only era – remains a worry.
Ultimately the burning question at the root of Sky's streaming reboot is why it took until now, when the Premier League returned, for Sky to make upgrades to its streaming platform. Did rugby and netball fans not deserve a "watch from start" option?
Sky's streaming offering, from sport to its entertainment streaming service Neon, jumped by 11 per cent over the past year to an all-time high of 461,240 customers, quickly catching up to the traditional satellite offering which continues its fall from 554,690 to 529,521 customers in the last year.
And yet, streaming still feels like a second thought despite proving time and time again to be the future, and for many the present, of television. Sky Sport Now also seems like it is attempting to replicate the feel of satellite TV, as opposed to optimising the unique streaming experience.
Streaming was always a flawed concept that would never provide a perfect product. But it still offers an invaluable service, especially for mobile and time-poor sports fans who want flexibility in how they watch sport.
Sky has done wonders in the last few years in earning back public goodwill after strong-arming its customers through market dominance for decades. To continue doing so in the streaming era, it will require a lot more than a delayed and ultimately underwhelming reboot.
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