Hundreds of Eir customers miss historic rugby match

Hundreds of Eir customers were prevented from watching Ireland’s historic victory over the All Blacks on Saturday night because of a technical glitch with its streaming service.

Eir is understood to have paid up to €250,000 for the rights to the match, which will go down as one of Ireland’s greatest rugby triumphs.

The match was was not aired on terrestrial television but shown instead on subscription channels Eir Sport 2 and BT Sport 2 and streamed live to Eir customers via the company’s Eir Sport app.

However, many subscribers said they were prevented from viewing it on the app because of a technical glitch while others complained it was too stuttery and too delayed to watch even when they did receive the stream.

The company said on Sunday it was still investigating the issue but had not yet got to the root cause of the problem.

“A significant number of our eir Sport customers enjoyed an historic Irish sporting occasion last night,” it said in a statement. “We are looking into a technical problem which affected a very small number of customers.”

It noted the game had been shown again on Saturday night for those who had missed it.

Social media storm

On Saturday night, dozens of frustrated Eir customers took to Twitter and Eir's Facebook page to complain about the service.

One disgruntled subscriber tweeted: “@eirSport extremely dissappointing, first big event as eir sport and you made a balls of it for everyone.”

Another tweeted: "TV licence paid. Eircom exorbitant broadband bill paid. No match due to technical incompetence by @eir ."

During the match, Eir tweeted: “A technical issue is currently affecting a small number of customers who are trying to login with the eir Sport app.”

However, several users disputed the company’s claim that the glitch only affected a small number of customers.

“Not a small number of customers. People who have subscribed to eirsport are unable to access it. That is completely unacceptable,” one user tweeted.

The company denied the problem affected more than a thousand customers but declined to detail the exact number that had been inconvenienced.

Eir said it planned to show the game again a number of times this week to give those fans who had travelled to Chicago "a chance to relive the momentous victory".

The match, which took place in Chicago's Soldier Field stadium, was the biggest Irish sporting fixture shown on Eir's channels. The company, however, declined to give details of viewer numbers.

It acquired Setanta Sports earlier this year and rebranded the company in July. In addition to Eir Sport 1 and 2, which carry a mix of local and international sports, its package includes four BT sports channels from the UK.

Virgin Media recently dropped the Eir Sports pack from its platform after it failed to agree commercial terms on a wholesale arrangement for its channels.

Eir’s decision to offer its sports channels free to all of its own customers with a broadband bundle is understood to have played a role in Virgin’s decision.