The $99 livestreams of the Mayweather-McGregor fight were plagued with issues - and now some angry customers are suing
The complaint was filed in Oregon by a group of consumers who paid $99.99 to watch the fight live through Showtime's iTunes app, but who were unable to view it in the advertised quality of "HD at 1080p resolution and at 60 frames per second, and who experienced ongoing grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls instead," according to the complaint.
"Instead of being upfront with consumers about its new, untested, underpowered service, defendant caused likelihood of confusion and misunderstanding as to the source and quality of the HD video consumers would see on fight night," the suit's attorney, Michael Fuller, wrote in the complaint filed Saturday. "Defendant intentionally misrepresented the quality and grade of video consumers would see using its app, and knowingly failed to disclose that its system was defective with respect to the amount of bandwidth available."
The class-action suit against Showtime is seeking "for each member of the class actual damages or $200 in statutory damages, whichever is greater," according to THR.
The streaming issues were not exclusive to Showtime's app, however. The title-card fight itself was reportedly delayed due to fans overloading the servers on UFC Fight Pass, though Twitter users posted about issues with both services.
Showtime released the following statement on Monday following complaints of streaming issues:
"We received a very limited number of complaints, and we're reviewing them all carefully, and we will respond accordingly. Refunds are handled at the point of sale, so of course anyone who bought directly from Showtime, via our online distribution or our app, and could not see the fight because of an issue with that distribution, we will issue a full refund."