Foxtel has revealed the source and the scale of the "technical glitches" that prevented thousands of subscribers from watching the season-seven debut of Game of Thrones on Monday night.
In a statement issued just before 3pm on Tuesday, the company apologised "unreservedly" to customers affected by the issue, while promising to "do everything possible to ensure that this does not occur again".
The technical issues, which were first reported around 8pm on Monday night, were the result of a "surge in demand" for its new streaming service Foxtel Now, the company said.
"The number of Australians subscribing to … Foxtel Now leapt by 40 per cent in the 48 hours prior to [Monday] night's screening of episode one. The combination of new Foxtel Now customers signing up and existing customers upgrading to get the Drama Pack so they could watch the show put unprecedented pressure on our technical operations."
The company claimed the issue resided in its identity management (IDM) system, which verifies a customer is entitled to view the content they are seeking to access. Such a system is crucial to a business model that sees different types of content offered in bundles, such as Sport or Family or Drama.
Ordinarily, the IDM handles around 5000 requests a day, the company said. But on Monday, it "was hit with 70,000 transactions in just a few hours".
"Unfortunately, due to this massive surge in demand, a significant number of customers experienced difficulty logging in to Foxtel Now and the Foxtel app," the company said.
"The system was unable to verify some customers' entitlements. We are unable to say exactly how many customers were affected because the system is unable to separately identify customers who have a problem logging in but later successfully manage to do so."
The company claimed that while it had anticipated massive interest in the series return, "the traffic that eventuated far exceeded expectations".
Similar issues also affected the US streaming service HBO Go and its Latin American affiliates.
There were no reports of technical difficulties at the time of the episode's first broadcast at 11am on Monday, even though it was available for streaming on Foxtel Now and the Foxtel app (formerly known as Foxtel Play or Foxtel Go) from around that time. It was only when people attempted to tune in, or sign up, later in the day that the issue arose.
Despite the problems, the episode set a new viewership record for subscription television in Australia, with Foxtel claiming an audience of 820,000 viewers.
Brian Walsh, Foxtel's executive director of television, said he was "ecstatic" with the result, and expected the number to grow to near 1.5 million by the end of the week "once more customers have viewed the episode through our catch-up on-demand service and encore screenings."
