Showtime Offering Some Refunds for Mayweather vs. McGregor After Lawsuit Filed
Showtime will be offering refunds to customers who purchased the pay-per-view between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor but were unable to witness the fight after the broadcast was plagued by website and application outages online.
Showtime’s response came after an Oregon man filed a class action lawsuit against the cable network for reimbursement after he purchased the Mayweather-McGregor pay-per-view but experienced a ton of issues with the live stream for the fight.
The cost of the Mayweather vs. McGregor pay-per-view was $99.99 for high definition.
While Showtime has not responded to the merits of the lawsuit, the company did issue a statement regarding refunds for customers who purchased the pay-per-view directly from them and were unable to watch the broadcast.
“We have received a very limited number of complaints and will issue a full refund for any customer who purchased the event directly from Showtime and were unable to receive the telecast,” Showtime Sports vice president of communications Chris DeBlasio said in a statement released on Monday.
Any customers who experienced problems with the pay-per-view broadcast with other outlets such as UFC.tv will have to deal directly with that company for any possible refund.
The class action lawsuit filed in Oregon Federal court states that the customers purchased the pay-per-view but instead of seeing the fight, they were met with “grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls”.
The lawsuit accuses Showtime “unlawful trade practices and unjust enrichment” due to the online servers not being ready to handle the influx of traffic needed to broadcast an event the magnitude of Mayweather vs. McGregor.
The lawsuit is seeking actual damages or $200 in statutory damages, whichever number is greater.
Saturday night’s card, which is expected to break all-time records for pay-per-view broadcasts, faced an uphill battle online after websites such as ShowtimePPV.com and UFC.tv both crashed during the event. The main even between Mayweather and McGregor was even delayed due to continued problems with viewers attempting to purchase and watch the event online.
