Game of Thrones crashes Foxtel Now & Streaming: Proving broadcast is king

Foxtel has had to take to Social Media to apologise for a major problem with it’s streaming services tonight, as the biggest night of the year for them comes and their servers are unable to cope with the demand.

With the 7th Season of Game of Thrones available today, it was inevitable there would be two spikes in demand.  Earlier today when the episodes launched, and tonight as the kids went to bed and people settled in to watch.

Sadly for those using the relaunched Foxtel Now service, or relying on Foxtel’s catch up app – things aren’t going well.

Foxtel have just released this statement on Facebook:

We are devastated that due to unprecedented demand, we are experiencing problems with our online services this evening. Obviously this comes at a time when so many of our customers are wanting to watch the first episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones.

We can assure you that we are doing everything we can to resolve these problems.

We can also assure customers that as soon as the issue is resolved they will be able to watch the episode using the On Demand features of our service.We will keep you updated as we seek to resolve the problem.

Again Foxtel apologises for the frustration this situation has caused.

Foxtel is not alone here, with US services slowed or halted due to the demand, all of which helps prove that we’re a long way of utopia when it comes to streaming internet (IP) content.

When the wave of viewers comes, the internet is overwhelmed with the traffic, and the host sites are brought down.

With Broadcast content (like State of Origin or Ninja Warrior) there is one broadcast signal and no issues if one or 4 million people tune in.

It’s a friendly reminder to those in the “rights” game that Broadcast is still very much king.  Long way to go before the Internet is robust enough, and companies are throwing enough money at their streaming platforms to just be ready for these kinds of things.

No word yet on when things will come back online – no point venting on Socials folks, those poor staff reading the messages can’t help here.