Optus’ transition into a media company is going full steam ahead with their biggest win being the acquisition of streaming rights for the immensely popular English Premier League last year. Pricing was announced earlier this year, with some controversy over the cost, but Optus appears to have relented in an attempt to placate customers by offering the EPL package free for 12 months if you pre-order before the 31st of July.
Optus customers on eligible postpaid mobile, mobile broadband, or home broadband plan are eligible to sign for the pre-order bonus allowing them to watch EPL games for free for 12 months. The free period lasts until the 31st of July next year, after which if you wish to continue watching EPL games, you will have to pay $15 per month if your plan is under $85 per month. As you’ve worked out, pre-paid customers are not included in this offer at all.
Optus refers to ‘eligible plans’ but it’s quite easy to check if you’re eligible by hitting their EPL offer website.
The games are available to be streamed with no data being counted against your monthly limit at least on selected plans, though for some bizarre reason are expected to supply data for adverts, analytics and authentication, which will count against their monthly data limit.
Update:
We asked Optus about the reasoning behind counting this data against your monthly cap, they responded by saying:
The data requirement for advertisements, analytics and authentication is very small compared to the data required to stream a match. The source URLs for this content are not static, and therefore it is more difficult to apply data free streaming.
The EPL games will be available to watch through a dedicated website, but access to streams is limited to 4 devices – Tablets/Mobiles – to watch the games. The content won’t just include EPL games, but also include 9 sub-channels in the 2016/17 season that will feature football related content such as reports from a pool of the Premier Leagues experts. Additional footbal related shows will also be shown including interactive live Shows like Fanzone and a range of news programming and analysis shows such as Matchday Live, Football Today and Kick Off, broadcast from the Uk.
Non-Optus customers aren’t completely left out of the dark with one game per week set to be aired on free-to-air TV provider SBS. This was part of a cross licensing deal which allows Optus to also stream the 2018 World Cup, as well as the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The Optus EPL pre-order deal is now live, so if you’re an EPL fan and an eligible Optus customer, you should head across to the Optus EPL website and sign up to score your free 12 months of games.
Seriously. I want to watch football. I want to watch it on a dedicated HD channel and I want to keep my internet provider. Instead, I have to sign my life away on a 24-month contract for an internet service I don’t want or need, in order to watch sport. It will also be streamed and they don’t guarantee there will be no buffering or other issues – I never have that on Foxtel. Optus purchased the rights without knowing how they would deliver it, then they realised the cost and worked out how they could fleece Australian football fans.… Read more »
I can’t give you a way around the HD aspect/Channel. But there is an option around having to change internet provider. Get the $35 month to month plan and EPL is included at least from what I can see.
Thanks Josh. Somebody else pointed that out too. Maybe I’m being a bit precious about it. I want to pay for a legit, high quality service but I currently pay $25 for the entier sports pack on Foxtel, versus $35 per month (plus $5 for a Fetch mini so I can watch it on TV) for a single sport with Optus. It just doesn’t compute in my brain!
Ding. All over this.