It's an ad server issue, which is annoying: essentially, the problem arises when Sky superimpose their own adverts over breaks in the sports schedule. I've now reproduced the issue with sport on TNT, Premier, and Virgin One so it's not just a Sports + package problem. When I finally got to a human on the Sky tech support chat, I was told that if I paid an additional fee to skip the playlist ads, the problem would go away. So, it's a self-induced problem due to poor ad integration, and one that I strongly suspect Sky could fix in a heartbeat if they simply screened the original ad-breaks rather than attempting to extract revenue from them twice.
If it isn't addressed quickly, I suspect I'll be cancelling my subscription at the end of the rugby season (it's not worth changing now), and moving to a provider that genuinely understands their technology stack.
