Domestic Serie A rights holder DAZN has responded to concerts regarding the quality of its streaming of the Italian top-flight.
The international subscription-based sports streaming platform has received complaints concerning the technical quality of broadcasts, with poor video quality, weak signal strength and buffering highlighted in particular by viewers.
As DAZN is an online service, the media rights contract meant that terrestrial TV-back up channels were only made available in areas considered to have poor internet access, meaning many viewers were unable to watch fixtures.
DAZN had previously defended its coverage of Inter Milan’s 4-0 win over Genoa on 21 August, blaming a traffic peak limited to a single content delivery network (CDN), and informing viewers that the issues had been resolved.
Now that more challenges have been encountered, however, Lugi De Siervo, Chief Executive of Serie A, has called for reassurance from the streaming service that problems will not continue.
A statement from DAZN read: “In recent months, new technologies have been implemented and important changes have been carried out, against which, already at the end of the first day, excellent results have been achieved such as the increase in the cumulative audience compared to previous years.
“We continue to work, continuing in constant dialogue and collaboration with the authority and partners, fundamental in this project of unprecedented change, as well as in the development and enhancement of DAZN Edge, the proprietary cache for traffic management and in the further process optimisation with global CDN.”
DAZN first acquired the domestic media rights to Serie A in a €840 million Telecom Italia-backed (TIM) three-year deal in March 2021 covering the 2021 to 2024 cycle, edging out incumbent broadcaster Sky Italia.
The firm has now been invited to a technical roundtable to discuss the matter, whilst Agcom – the Italian communications regulator – has also sought answers, and consumer organisation Codacons has called for compensation for subscribers affected by the technical difficulties.
The streaming service continued: “As in every phase of change, and as has already happened in the past, the introduction of new technologies of this magnitude requires a physiological moment of adjustment, a phase necessary to allow further improvements, fully expressing the incredible potential of streaming to the advantage of football, sport and the whole country and DAZN’s commitment to this process is absolute and unconditional.”
