So timely.Thank you. As a pensioner I find paying for Kayo an extravagance but here I am. Last round it started playing up in the 3rd Q of the Dockers/Melb game with the commentary about 2 minutes *ahead* of the play. I thought it might be fixed by the final quarter but no. I could not see what I was hearing and I was anticipating goals that I had heard were coming. It all felt very weird and definitely not good enough. I watched without sound after that. This glitch spoilt the whole experience. I wondered if it was our TV but your analysis has pointed to Kayo. If it was any other product we'd have some consumer rights. I really appreciate this post. Thank you. We are being taken for a ride.
Hi JayJay, thanks so much for writing. Sorry that you're one of the thousands of people who've had a poor experience with Kayo. They really do exploit our sport addiction, don't they?
I didn't mention that the free to air broadcast did not start until 6pm Western Time here in Perth so Kayo had the monopoly this round for dedicated supporters. The first three games for Freo are/were delayed.
We tried to use Kayo to replace our Foxtel box after the Foxtel price was increased yet again. We not only watch (and record) AFL, but consume NBA, NBL, NRL and F1. I signed us up and (thankfully) kept Foxtel just in case.
Well, what a waste of time. At the time there was no “resume” function. So if you stated watching an NBA game and then want to come back to it, nope you have to restart. What? Isn’t this a streaming platform? You want me to watch a game in one sitting (I often start watching a game during my lunch hour and then come back to it at the end of my working day). We persevered for a couple of days but the user experience was dreadful. On the tv, on the iPad, just awful. I know that I am in an extremely privileged position to have and afford Foxtel, but I would watch my sport on free to air and miss out entirely than try Kayo again. It doesn’t sound like it’s improved and I don’t think it will. Which is a shame because it could give Foxtel a run for its money. But they don’t want it to do they? And now that ESPN is available via Disney, whilst the user experience (like fast forwarding through time outs and stuff) isn’t great, it’s still better than Kayo.
Great piece, well thought out and argued. So I subscribed to Kayo last year when the Dees had a few games on Saturday’s. Discovered I preferred watching Kayo for most games as the commentators on the AFL do a great job. Then Piastri started doing well in F1 so I started watching F1 again. Overall, my experience wasn’t awful but I watched on my iPad as casting to my TV would have involved me getting more hardware (joys of an old-ish TV). I’d been going to sign up again now that the AFL is back on and the F1 has, sorta, started up again.
But reading your piece and thinking about my shrinking budget and I’m really unsure that I will. I guess it will come down to how long I can cope with the CH07 commentary team. BTW Stan aren’t much better either… I watch the EPL on that. But forget watching it on TV, that’s an iPad only experience as it buffers constantly on the TV through Fetch. A common experience shared by some Rugby Union friends.
Thanks for reading, Lizzie! I have the odd issue with other apps like Stan but nothing to the extent of Kayo. It's in a (bad) league of its own, especially with all the price increases.
Would you believe I actually got Kayo customer service to admit fault about something last year (I forget what bothered me enough to waste my time engaging with them). They offered to add an extra week or two onto my current billing period. They went to add it, saw I had already cancelled and told me they can't add anything to a cancelled sub and that was it.
On your Netflix point, they technically offer live sport with WWE and I think I saw something about baseball coming soon in a recent email. In my experience, whenever I've chucked on live WWE it's worked much better than Kayo and Stan.
So timely.Thank you. As a pensioner I find paying for Kayo an extravagance but here I am. Last round it started playing up in the 3rd Q of the Dockers/Melb game with the commentary about 2 minutes *ahead* of the play. I thought it might be fixed by the final quarter but no. I could not see what I was hearing and I was anticipating goals that I had heard were coming. It all felt very weird and definitely not good enough. I watched without sound after that. This glitch spoilt the whole experience. I wondered if it was our TV but your analysis has pointed to Kayo. If it was any other product we'd have some consumer rights. I really appreciate this post. Thank you. We are being taken for a ride.
Hi JayJay, thanks so much for writing. Sorry that you're one of the thousands of people who've had a poor experience with Kayo. They really do exploit our sport addiction, don't they?
I didn't mention that the free to air broadcast did not start until 6pm Western Time here in Perth so Kayo had the monopoly this round for dedicated supporters. The first three games for Freo are/were delayed.
The delays for "interstate" teams are a killer. I remember them from when I still lived in Adelaide.
We tried to use Kayo to replace our Foxtel box after the Foxtel price was increased yet again. We not only watch (and record) AFL, but consume NBA, NBL, NRL and F1. I signed us up and (thankfully) kept Foxtel just in case.
Well, what a waste of time. At the time there was no “resume” function. So if you stated watching an NBA game and then want to come back to it, nope you have to restart. What? Isn’t this a streaming platform? You want me to watch a game in one sitting (I often start watching a game during my lunch hour and then come back to it at the end of my working day). We persevered for a couple of days but the user experience was dreadful. On the tv, on the iPad, just awful. I know that I am in an extremely privileged position to have and afford Foxtel, but I would watch my sport on free to air and miss out entirely than try Kayo again. It doesn’t sound like it’s improved and I don’t think it will. Which is a shame because it could give Foxtel a run for its money. But they don’t want it to do they? And now that ESPN is available via Disney, whilst the user experience (like fast forwarding through time outs and stuff) isn’t great, it’s still better than Kayo.
Great piece, well thought out and argued. So I subscribed to Kayo last year when the Dees had a few games on Saturday’s. Discovered I preferred watching Kayo for most games as the commentators on the AFL do a great job. Then Piastri started doing well in F1 so I started watching F1 again. Overall, my experience wasn’t awful but I watched on my iPad as casting to my TV would have involved me getting more hardware (joys of an old-ish TV). I’d been going to sign up again now that the AFL is back on and the F1 has, sorta, started up again.
But reading your piece and thinking about my shrinking budget and I’m really unsure that I will. I guess it will come down to how long I can cope with the CH07 commentary team. BTW Stan aren’t much better either… I watch the EPL on that. But forget watching it on TV, that’s an iPad only experience as it buffers constantly on the TV through Fetch. A common experience shared by some Rugby Union friends.
Thanks for reading, Lizzie! I have the odd issue with other apps like Stan but nothing to the extent of Kayo. It's in a (bad) league of its own, especially with all the price increases.
Would you believe I actually got Kayo customer service to admit fault about something last year (I forget what bothered me enough to waste my time engaging with them). They offered to add an extra week or two onto my current billing period. They went to add it, saw I had already cancelled and told me they can't add anything to a cancelled sub and that was it.
On your Netflix point, they technically offer live sport with WWE and I think I saw something about baseball coming soon in a recent email. In my experience, whenever I've chucked on live WWE it's worked much better than Kayo and Stan.