The highly anticipated Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao championship which MultiChoice and SuperSport told DStv subscribers would be broadcast live in South Africa was suddenly delayed due to massive pay-TV problems across America on Saturday when pay-per-view (PPV) orders didn't go through and pay-TV subscribers became vocal, and angry, over a paid for service they couldn't access.
The start of Saturday's Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao championship fight set for Saturday night in the United States and on Sunday morning South African time and billed as "The Fight of the Century", was unexpectedly delayed.
It happened after several pay-TV operators in America had massive trouble to process the PPV orders from customers, many who paid as much as $100 (R1191) to watch the fight.
It means that the viewing of the fight scheduled for SuperSport 2 (DStv 202) on DStv in South Africa and across the rest of the African continent was also delayed.
In America the problem continued for hours as widespread technical difficulties caused anger across the United States from New York to Los Angeles and everywhere in between.
Highlights of the boxing match is being repeated today (Sunday) on SuperSport 5 (DStv 205) and the content has also been placed on MultiChoice's on-demand service, DStv Catch Up.
The on-screen corner logo South African viewers saw and will see on the DStv Catch Up match, "HBO | Showtime | PPV " is what caused the problem and the delay in America.
"We asked consumers for patience with the operators as they deal with overwhelming amount of orders," said Showtime in a statement.
HBO said "There are more orders tonight than any night in PPV history. Fans should just be patient and distributors will process their orders".
Angry pay-TV viewers in America flooded their satellite-TV and cable TV operators after they were unable to get the fight, with thousands saying on social media that they will be changing service providers due to the unresponsiveness and lack of customer service from the companies.
The companies blamed the problems on the enormous volume of pay-per-view orders for the fight which they were not able to process fast enough.
