Pay-per-view customers, who paid $99 to watch the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight on Saturday night, demand refunds from TV provider Showtime after experiencing difficulties with video quality. Two customers filed a class-action lawsuit against Showtime over the live-streaming problems that caused continual trouble to several video spectators during the bout.

While Showtime declined to comment on the lawsuit, Chris DeBlasio, senior vice president of sports communications at Showtime Networks, said the TV provider will review and handle refunds to the limited number of complaints who purchased the streaming service such as ShowtimePPV.com and ShowtimePPVapp to watch its biggest sporting event.

Additionally, USA Today Sports received the statement released by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), saying that customers experienced technical difficulties with streaming services, which disappointed the UFC. Because of technical difficulties from various providers, the main event using the services were delayed.

Customers on failed streaming service experience

There were two separate lawsuits filed by two customers, one in Oregon, and other in New York, over steaming service failures. Portland resident Zack Bartel sued Showtime for the unlawful trade practice and providing its app that saw "grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls." The cable provider was also sued by New York resident Victor Mallh for the breach of contract, claiming that "the pictures were delayed, cutting out, or otherwise incomplete."

According to a report, customers around the globe (including the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom) sent an email to MMAFighting.com for the feedback and expressed frustrations over the streaming service they ordered from the UFC for the boxing event.

Customers, who ordered its UFC.tv and Fight Pass product, said they had issues of accessing the services to watch the fight.

A Florida resident told MMA Fighting that he acquired UFC pay-per-view through Fight Pass to watch the fight but he was displeased with the live-streaming quality. Without assistance from the customer service representative, he was considering the possibility of nixing his subscription and would no longer make the purchase of product or service to watch UFC again.

"I was not able to watch the fight on Fight Pass," one customer wrote. "I instead had to pay double and buy the fight on my TV provider and watch it there. I emailed UFC three times and talked to three customers service people via chat and none of them could help me."

Projection on pay-per-view buys

As far as the prediction for the Mayweather-McGregor fight is concerned, executives in the cable industry projected that the fight could possibly reach five million buys on pay-per-view in North America to surpass the record of Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which generated 4.6 million buys in 2015.

Pay-per-view experts predicted that this fight would generate $500 million in the U.S. and $700 million globally.

Prior to the event, people anticipated this fight should be the most-watched pay-per-view in history through legal streaming services from UFC and Showtime. Illegal services were also fueled to customers. According to Variety, nearly 3 million viewers watched its event through the use of 239 illegal streaming services.

UFC superstar McGregor lost to Mayweather in 10 rounds of the fight at T-Mobile Arena.
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