Sky’s Disastrous US Open Tennis Coverage

[Shashie]

Such a poorly delivered US Open Tennis service:

1) No on demand viewing service. Why are there no matches being shown on catch up once the live stream finished? I want to come in from work and be able to select a match that was on earlier in the day. On Prime this was easy. It listed all the matches played thus far &, once you selected your desired match, you could  watch either from start or live if match still ongoing. 

2) Can't pause, FF or RW matches when using Red Button

3) Why can't I watch a tennis stream from the start like I have done for years when watching tennis on Prime? Instead, when pressing the match option for one of the tennis streams shown on Red Button,  it just takes you live to wherever it is in the Match. Why would I want that? I want to see a match from the start and FF/rewind/pause as I need.

4) Clunky poorly designed Red Button service.  Bizarrely pressing the Red Button takes you to this small window on R on the screen displaying tennis player rankings. After many trial & error attempts, it was only here in Sky threads that I learned you have to press Backup to get the courts option. If watching a stream, then to return to the courts option you press Select then Backup. 

5) The current live match scores are shown on the tiles when browsing the court stream options on the Red Button. Thanks Sky for spoiling the entire match for me.  Maybe I've recorded on my Sky Q box, the night matches shown overnight on the Sky Arena & Tennis channels & not watched the recordings yet!!

6) The Sky Action Channel on 407 was of very poor picture quality last night. The Fritz vs Johnson match picture was fuzzy and sort of "Sizzling". Atrocious quality. 

7) The Sky Tennis Channel on 408 had poor sound. When watching Coco Gauff vs Laura Siegmaund last night, I could barely hear the commentators as the background noise was so loud. It sounded like they were playing with a high speed train constantly zipping through!!

Sky - please urgently amend the above issues. 

Sharon

[Gravy258]

I agree, the picture quality is shocking. I watch via Now on  Google TV stick in hd only, via full Fibre.   After paying £32 to watch the US open this is a joke. Not a patch on Eurosport or even Amazon prime. At 5 times the price.

You have to Google the fixtures list as it only shows stadium names ?

Certainly won't be subscribing any longer than the tennis

[smstyles]

It's horrible. Trying to watch Svitolina Court 17 right now and there is no sound whatsoever. Watching the slams is the highlight of my year and this is by far the worst coverage I've ever seen. 

[RichAA1]

Thanks Sky for ruining my US Open experience . The picture quality is awful, showing highlights instead of on demand full matches is abysmal, just making live streams only available, with no way of watching from the start of matches. I cannot believe how bad this is, you are destroying all of the good work Amazon Prime have done over the last four years. Is this how you intend to deliver the ATP  and WTA tours next year?? 

[ftballman]

Just to add in on specifically the picture quality. The pictures from Arthur Ashe seem to be mostly fine whereas other courts are mixed and pictures from Louis Armstrong vary from poor to looking like a bad VHS transfer.

[Z0eR0berts]

I can't believe there's no catch up!!  As you say, Prime was brilliant.... could see all the upcoming matches, watch all the finished matches.  I don't want to be up at midnight watching...  Absolute rubbish!

[martin3]

Hi,

so rocked by Sky's decisions regarding coverage of the the US Open.one would think they would have reviewed Amazon Primes coverage (which was peerless,groundbreaking and user friendly) and discuss how to carry it forward..instead and this strains credulity they defiantly opted to go backwards  .So frustrating on many levels as mentioned in the earlier posts..concentration of british players all unlikely to make it into the second week but discussed as if major contenders to the exclusion of actual serious contenders..Most frustrating is no access to recently ended matches which was a highlight of Amazon coverage which means only access next day to novak,swiatek,alcaraz matches and no more..going forward this is surely not sustainable as  a tennis business model ..Can only hope sky are rapidly engaged in listening to its tennis viewers urgently 

[RichAA1]

I've already complained to Viewer Relations, feel free to email them at:

ViewerR@sky.uk

This is the reply I've had:

Thank you for your email to Sky Sports regarding our coverage of the 2023 US Open Tennis.

I am sorry to read that you are not enjoying our coverage of the tennis.

Sky Sports does make every match available to view via the main coverage on Sky Sports Tennis and our Red Button service. There are also highlights published for individual matches and a selection of full matches made available On Demand from each day of play. We also replay matches from the previous day on the Tennis channel.

Sky Sports always values feedback from our viewers. Your comments have been noted and passed to the Sky Sports team for their information.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your views on our coverage.

Suffice to say I've replied to them!!

[smstyles]

I just received the same response. 

[RichAA1]

This is the reply I have sent.....

Thanks for the reply.

I don’t think you have read my email carefully. The red button service only shows LIVE matches– there is no option to watch a match from the beginning on demand either whilst the match is live or completed unless it is one of the “selected matches” – see below. Obviously I can’t watch more than one match live – what if there are two matches I want to watch on at the same time, how can I catch-up on the other one, or if it was played in the early hours of the morning, and not on a show court? All of these issues were not a problem with Amazon prime which had a user interface showing matches sorted by event and status, i.e. men’s singles, women’s singles - upcoming, live or completed; if complete you could watch a replay with no adverts, or if live watch from the beginning.

Why is there only a selection of matches to watch on demand? Are these the ones that were on Sky Tennis or Action channels with adverts, that could be recorded anyway? I don’t want to sit watching adverts on the replays of the previous day’s matches.

I haven’t even mentioned the picture quality which is awful (Ashe court seems to be the only one that has a decent picture) and showing highlights instead of on demand full matches is a poor substitute to say the least.

I cannot believe how bad this is coverage is – yes the live courts are available if you are there to sit around all day and night watching  the live streams, but those of us who work can’t do that. We have had brilliant coverage on Amazon Prime over the past few years and it’s the standard we expect. Is this how the ATP  and WTA coverage will be next year? 

All I can say is thanks Sky for ruining my US Open experience so far. Give viewers and tennis fans what they want – on demand coverage so we can choose what match we want to watch and when we want to watch it.

If my word isn’t enough, go and have a look at the posts on Sky community!

[Beanie-70]

Trying to choose a match on  the red button for the us open on sky sports but you can only watch live, you can't pause, or watch a game from the start

the picture is very jumpy and on court 17 there is no sound at all, very disappointed when bbc had a much better service for Wimbledon and we had no such issues and we have to pay for this service. Ridiculous 

[RichAA1]

I am really fed up with this absolute disgrace of coverage.

Trying to find anything I actually want to watch on the live courts is difficult, knowing the score halfway through doesn't help. The picture quality is poor to say the least. There are matches that have been on that I would like to watch but no way of accessing them now. This is pitiful, so disappointed.

[LucyBov]

Absolutely agree.

Also yesterday when I wanted to watch a match on the red button the stream was jumping making it impossible to watch.

Today, now, I am trying to stream the Chris Eubanks match and there is no sound!

It is a complete shambles and I paid extra for this!!!!!

[RichAA1]

@martin3 

I tried going into one of the selected on demand matches and guess what? Three minutes of adverts which I could pay a premium to ad skip, yeah right. I'm already paying for this load of tosh as it is! Thank goodness Sky doesn't have any other Slams! 

[Minty23]

I have sky stream so there is no option to record matches. There is a posted recording of yesterdays coverage so I thought at least I'd be able to forward through that to the match I want to watch - but no. It stops at every ad break and shows the full adds. In an 8 hour coverage I counted 42 add breaks - so just forwarding through would mean watching over an hour of adds before I even get to the match I want to watch. Unless I pay even more money for the facility to forward through ads. That's just extortion in my book.