Rush on MagentaTV: Telekom broadcasts Turkey round of 16 on YouTube
The interest in the European Championship duel between Turkey and Austria overloaded the MagentaTV booking system. Telekom ended up showing the match on YouTube
Good for those who booked early: Spontaneous bookers on Tuesday evening were stuck in the MagentaTV queue.
(Image: Deutsche Telekom)
Of all things, Deutsche Telekom showed its big European Championship exclusive match publicly on YouTube: the round of 16 match between Turkey and Austria at Euro 2024 on Tuesday evening was actually supposed to be shown exclusively on MagentaTV. However, the huge interest in it overloaded the IPTV service's booking systems to such an extent that thousands of people found themselves in a digital queue – and apparently had no prospect of watching the match in time. Deutsche Telekom therefore decided to broadcast the match publicly on YouTube.
(Image: heise online)
Deutsche Telekom provided the waiting MagentaTV subscribers with a direct link to a YouTube stream. This live stream was broadcast on the "Magenta Sport" channel on YouTube, but was hidden. So to watch, you needed the link. However, because the link quickly circulated on social media, over 500,000 people were watching for free on YouTube towards the end of the match, which Turkey narrowly won 2:1. This is likely to have significantly exceeded the number of would-be subscribers in the MagentaTV queue.
"Exceeds our expectations"
"The response to our exclusive round of 16 match between Austria and Turkey has been overwhelming and far exceeded our expectations," MagentaTV announced. "That's why we're also showing the match in our digital waiting room so that our customers don't miss a second of the game while booking MagentaTV."
According to comments on X, many users had already booked the service for a fee before they were confronted with the technical problems. Heise online has asked Deutsche Telekom for comment. The replacement stream on YouTube was apparently running in upscaled 1080p resolution with an apparent 24 FPS and was therefore of significantly poorer quality than the real MagentaTV stream that existing customers were able to watch. The technical problems only affected people who booked a new subscription on Tuesday evening. The monthly subscription to MagentaTV costs at least 10 euros.
Last exclusive Telekom match
The round of 16 match between Turkey and Austria was the last of a total of five exclusive matches that Telekom had secured. All other matches will be shown on free TV on the public broadcasters or RTL. The fact that a round of 16 match involving Turkey was shown exclusively on PayTV of all places annoyed many soccer fans. The broadcasters involved remain silent about the selection process for the exclusive matches.
Deutsche Telekom already secured the broadcasting rights for Euro 2024 at the end of 2019. ARD, ZDF and RTL have acquired sublicenses from Deutsche Telekom to also broadcast many of the matches.
(dahe)
