Turner: Lack Of Memory And Server Capacity To Handle High Volume Of "Consumer Access Requests" For The Match

Good news, bad news!

People wanted to watch The Match! Good.

The largest telecommunications company America couldn’t take your money. Not good.

Gerry Smith of Bloomberg writes that the “latest botched attempt at streaming sports online” threatens to “undermine television’s transition to a digital future.”

As he notes, sports face different streaming issues with too many people at once trying to access the same thing. There are also multiple layers no longer faced with cable:

It involves taking a feed, ensuring it works on devices such as Xbox or Roku, encrypting it, inserting ads, then handing it off to a third party for delivery to an internet provider -- all in real time. A crash means viewers can miss a thrilling touchdown, buzzer-beater or a missed putt.

But as Smith notes, the actual stream of The Match worked fine, it was the actual attempt to pay that failed, with most reporting a complete inability to get anywhere while others say they got in without ever being asked for a credit card number.

On Monday, a Turner spokesman said the glitch during the golf match was caused by a lack of memory and server capacity required to process “a high volume of consumer access requests in a condensed time frame.”

The high volume part is great news for the organizers. Though the only number available at this point is an AP mention of 500 on hold waiting for assistance when the technology failed.

The complete meltdown component will take time and perhaps even a new model to convince consumers to try paying. As Ryan Lavner notes in this blistering assessment of the proceedings, the price may have to come down if there is another attempt taken.

Sports Business Daily offered two tough love pages of reviews (here and here).

We discussed highs and lows today on Morning Drive, with SB Nation’s Brendan Porath joining the conversation: