With the news that Ifollow would allow fans from outside the UK to watch their championship team live for every game I decided to give it a try and put down my thoughts here.
My team, Reading FC failed in the Championship play offs last season and with us playing some decent football I saw Ifollow as a great option and their promises of live HD pictures and exclusive material persuaded me to pay the $150 for the service.
At this point I should probably tell you about my IT set up. I have a private 50 MB internet connection which streams online video perfectly, including my cable TV from my provider here in Thailand. I have a 55 inch 4K TV with internet capabilities and an android box attached to it. Something I found out was that Ifollow would only work on a mobile phone or laptop so my android box would be useless. This meant attaching my laptop via a HDMI cable and this works pretty well with Ifollow.
Our first game of the season, away at QPR ( one of a few teams not using Ifollow), was a chance to try things out and I decided to buy a match pass. This is where my first problem arose, I couldn’t purchase the individual pass and the live assistance couldn’t help. Oh well I thought, I was pretty much going to buy the season pass anyway – its $5 a game.
With my season pass purchased it was time to load things up. 15 minutes before the start of the game the pictured started but alas no commentary or team lineup info. Now there is the option of radio commentary but you need to sync this yourself. The first half the quality of the picture certainly wasn’t HD, it was watchable but I would say it is closer to standard definition. I put this down to QPR not using Ifollow as in the second game of the season the picture was pretty close to HD.
However, after 55 minutes the video stopped and despite frantic efforts with Ifollow staff I was unable to get the video stream back. The audio remained however which made me believe that the fault was with Ifollow, which they confirmed via email. As we were down to 10 men and playing poorly I wasn’t too fussed and put it down to first day bugs.
Match day 2, at home to Fulham was my next chance to try this service and I got ready just before the game. However, the video wasn’t working and only the radio stream remained. After 15 minutes the video came on but this isn’t what I would expect from an official service. I was told this was perhaps due to my internet but as I said I have a 50MB private connection and I had previously watched the early Premiership game online via my Thai cable company.
During the second half the quality deteriorated and every 5 seconds the video would skip a second, making it difficult to watch. Indeed Reading scored and I saw the player about to shoot followed by him celebrating, I had missed the goal!
With these problems I decided to ask for a refund on my season pass as I found it unwatchable but was refused. My advice get a match pass and try it before committing. I have other friends here in Thailand who purchased and they have had mixed experiences too.
The standard highlights videos are quite good but many of these are available on YouTube or released by the club on Facebook anyway. I hope things improve and at the moment problems are just because the service is new.
