CHTR Charter Communications Inc New

By Drew FitzGerald and Joe Flint 

AT&T Inc. and other big television distributors said Saturday they would refund customers who paid to watch a showdown between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson after AT&T Inc. shanked its telecast of the much-anticipated match.

AT&T intended to use the pay-per-view golf match as a showcase of its media capabilities after its acquisition of Time Warner. The transmission fell victim to technical glitches and could end up being a money loser for the company.

Problems with the transmission of Friday's match prompted AT&T, shortly before it began, to make the pay-per-view event free to viewers who used its B/R Live streaming video service.

That in turn prompted viewers who had paid to watch the match via their cable or satellite providers to complain that others were able to watch it at no charge.

AT&T, which owns DirecTV, said it would refund customers who paid for the event. Cable giants Comcast Corp and Charter Communications Inc. and satellite-TV provider Dish Network Corp. responded Saturday, saying they wouldn't charge their customers the $19.99 fee.

Typically, programmers of an event, in this case AT&T's Turner unit, and distributors split the pay-per-view revenue generated from viewers buying the pay-per-view event. Terms of the agreed-upon split between Turner and distributors is unknown but the usual split is 50-50.

Spokespeople for Dish, Comcast and Charter declined to comment on whether they would still pay AT&T a share of their revenues from the event, despite the refunds.

Dish said it was issuing credits to customers who paid through either its Dish satellite or SlingTV streaming services. "Since Turner streamed the event for free at the last minute due to technical issues," Dish said, "we are happy to do the right thing for our customers."

Many viewers of B/R Live, a new sports portal AT&T's Bleacher Report brand, watched the match for free after the online service dropped its paywall.

It's unclear how many people paid to watch the match, which Mr. Mickelson won with a birdie on the 22nd hole, giving him the $9 million prize. The number of people who purchased the event will be available next week.

AT&T had spent months promoting the golf match, the first event of its kind to be telecast in a pay-per-view format. AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a September interview with The Wall Street Journal that the match would illustrate the benefits of its June purchase of Time Warner, a transaction that combined one of the country's biggest wireless carriers and pay-TV distributors with a massive TV programmer.

After the acquisition, AT&T renamed the Time Warner business WarnerMedia and said it would move quickly to take better advantage of the division's sports broadcast assets, which include rights to carry National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball games.

WarnerMedia's Turner unit owns B/R Live, the streaming service that struggled Friday with technical difficulties. Launched earlier this year, B/R Live offers live-streaming of sports leagues including the NBA and UEFA Champions League soccer.

A WarnerMedia spokesman said Saturday the company is still investigating the cause of the technical hiccups.

This is hardly the first time live-streaming of an event has had technical issues. HBO's stream of the season premiere of its hit drama "Game of Thrones" in 2017 crashed its servers. Hulu and PlayStation Vue both had problems with live-streaming the Super Bowl earlier this year.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 24, 2018 16:03 ET (21:03 GMT)

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