Sky’s US Open tennis coverage has been branded “unwatchable” and “absolutely terrible” by scores of unhappy TV customers.
The broadcaster launched its new “Sky Sports+” streaming service to coincide with the start of the English football season, having signed a deal to stream over 1,000 games through the 2024-25 season.
It has also become the platform for its extra US Open tennis coverage, which aims to give viewers “unprecedented” access to every court at Flushing Meadows.
However, there was an outpouring of frustration over the first week of this year’s tournament, when a number of TV viewers – who are encouraged by presenters to use the red button to view other streams – were forced to abandon the glitchy coverage and just watch the linear Sky Sports Tennis channel instead.
“It’s absolutely terrible,” said Luke from Southend. “I’m watching on Virgin Media, and have resorted to just watching the main feed, the extra courts are unwatchable, keeps freezing! Tried all sorts to help, absolutely nothing has done.”
“It is very annoying. Freezes, flickers and disappears at times,” said Elaine Morris, another who watches Sky through Virgin Media.
Another, who uses Sky Q and has Sky’s broadband service, said: “It’s been poor. I used the red button for matches and it was sticking a lot.”
“It’s awful,” said a fourth viewer. “Last night I just gave up and watched what they were showing on the Sky tennis channel because watching the matches I wanted to via the app was so glitchy and laggy.”
After being presented with the complaints by i, it is understood that Sky engineers identified a specific problem and applied a fix on Friday, with customers reporting some improvements over the weekend.
“I watched Gauff-Navarro on Sunday, and it was somewhat better, but not ideal,” said one viewer.
“Definitely worse quality than other tournaments. Lagging and stop-start. But it was more watchable than before! There were matches earlier in the week that just kept on freezing and it was impossible to watch.”
Another added: “Mine was still freezing during the Fritz match last night, not quite as bad but still happening.”
There have been fewer problems with Sky’s digital offering, on mobile or tablet, with some TV viewers having to resort to that in order to watch matches they wanted to view.
“Been absolutely perfect on my phone but on my TV it’s constantly freezing,” said Dan from Essex, a sentiment echoed by many other viewers.
Sky has encouraged users to contact them directly to find solutions to problems, and stressed that they are working hard to give viewers greater choice of action to watch.
However, comparisons have inevitably been drawn with previous rights holder Amazon Prime Video, who offered a fully digital service with no linear TV channel.
While that did mean that viewers without smart TV or internet-enabled TV could not view it, the ability to watch any court at any time was unrivalled when they first took over the US Open rights in 2018.
The e-commerce giant did not renew the deal though, allowing Sky, who also picked up the rights to the men’s and women’s professional tours, to bring tennis back to the network after a five-year hiatus.
A Sky spokesperson told i: “The scale of Sky Sports+ is unprecedented in UK broadcasting, bringing sport fans more live matches than ever before. We can already see from our audience figures that there is great demand from our customers.
“Despite most TV streams being delivered smoothly, we’re aware of a small number not running as they should for some customers.”
