FIGHT FAIL. Showmax offers a subscriber refund for delayed Mayweather McGregor boxing match after Showtime pay-per-view problems in America.

Naspers' subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service Showmax says it's offering subscribers who signed up to see the Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor boxing fight a refund after pay-per-view chaos led to a viewing delay because of encoding issues.

The hyped Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor bout entitled "The Money Fight" was broadcast on SuperSport on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform very early today, with Showmax that promised it would have it available shortly thereafter by 10:00 on Sunday morning - but that didn't happen.

On social media Showmax said the service will offer people who signed up to watch the boxing fight a refund.

In response to a media enquiry about what happened, Showmax says the "The Money Fight" is now available on the service.

The pay-per-view disaster started in America when Showtime, that produced the boxing event for TV, couldn't cope with the large number of Americans who decided to sign up with the pay-per-view method to stream-watch the boxing clash.

The Las Vegas Journal Review reports that  Showtime blamed late buy-ins and internet connectivity issues, which made Showtime delay the match.

For South African viewers it meant a delay from the 05:00 starting time by an hour.

According to Floyd Mayweather "the pay-per-view servers in California and Florida crashed".

Showtime said that "due to high demand, we have reports of scattered outages from various cable and satellite provides and the online offering. We will delay the start of the main event slightly to allow for systems to get on track. We do not expect a lengthy delay."

The Showtime delay in America caused a knock-on effect for Showmax.

"Once we get the fight file, we then encode it into the various qualities needed and upload it to our content management system," Showmax told TVwithThinus.

"We were on the back foot a bit from the more than one hour delay to the start of the fight and the fact that it lasted longer than we'd anticipated."

"We'd run a bunch of tests ahead of time on express coding that had worked fine, but on the day we ran into some challenges and had to fall back on our standard encoding procedure which is quite a bit slower."

"We understand how frustrating this is for customers and ask anyone affected to get in touch with the customer care team. In the meantime we're going to do a full post-mortem to understand exactly what went wrong and to make sure we don't have a repeat in the future," said Showmax.

Another boxing DStv pop-up channel as SuperSport creates 'Money Fight' Mayweather/McGregor channel for 8 days leading up to their big fight.

MultiChoice is adding a second boxing-interest, temporary DStv pop-up channel with SuperSport that is creating a "Money Fight" channel that will build up to the big boxing fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor on 27 August.

The pop-up channel will go live on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform on Saturday 19 August on DStv channel 213 and run for 8 days until 27 August.

The pop-up channel will show rebroadcasts of Floyd Mayweather's great fights and his visit to South Africa in 2014 and the popular All Access shows.

The pop-up channel will be available from Saturday to DStv Premium and DStv Access subscribers and will broadcast daily from 17:00 to 01:00.

On 27 August SuperSport will cross to Las Vegas at 03:00 in the morning for the undercard clash with the main bout expected to start after 5:00.

Highlights of the Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor fight will be available on DStv Catch Up in the hours after the event and DStv Catch Up Plus available on connected Exploras and Catch Up on DStv Now will carry the full fight later in the day.

Naspers' Showmax subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service will also show the fight later that day.

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao live fight on SuperSport on DStv delayed due to pay-TV problems across America.

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.