The current reality of being a football fan is that we have to settle for watching our team play on screens rather than in the stadium. While we await the return to something approximating normality, we have to settle for streams of Huddersfield Town’s games using the iFollow service.
Streaming a game is never going to be the same as experiencing it in person but it’s the best option available right now. However, the iFollow system that is used to deliver streams to fans is currently not a great user experience. It’s not awful but there are some flaws that hamper it.
This article looks at how the iFollow service could be improved. Before starting, I want to quickly point out that this isn’t a criticism of Huddersfield Town as the iFollow service is part of a deal that the whole league is involved in and there is little the club can do.
Get the audio quality right
The quality of the sound on the majority of streams I’ve watched since the restart has been poor. There’s static and crackle most of the time and occasionally it will either dip out completely or judder in a way that makes it impossible to know what’s going on. It sounds like Oggy has been replaced by a malfunctioning robot at times.
I don’t fully understand why the sound is so rubbish when the Radio Leeds broadcast they are pulling through is recorded at a decent quality. On DAB radio the sound is crystal clear whenever I’ve listened to Town on that format, so I don’t see why an online stream can’t have equivalent quality.
The picture quality of the games isn’t amazing but it’s not too bad either, so I’m not going to make a fuss about that in this article. The sound is a real bugbear of mine and it feels like a bit poxy that it continues to be a problem even though it’s three months since we all started streaming matches.
Thanks to Steven in the comments for pointing out the syncing of the audio and video is also frequently awful. For Norwich the audio was 5 seconds behind the action. For Brentford it was 2 seconds ahead. This should be basic stuff to get right.
Do something about the adverts
“Did somebody say Just Eat?” rang in my ears about a dozen times a game after the restart when that advert was played on a constant loop. Currently it’s “Score that goal…” for the FIFA advert. Endlessly repeated before and after the match.
Because of the widespread issues logging on to iFollow in the early games of the service being widely used, I tend to log in plenty of time before kickoff and spend the build up to the game listening to the Radio Leeds coverage but then get irritated by the frequent advert interruptions which play the same advert on a loop.
Every fan using iFollow is paying for the service, either directly through match passes or indirectly through having a season ticket. It feels a bit much that you then get advertisements shoved down your throat too. I would find them less annoying though if they had a bit more variety in their advertisers. Or maybe selected adverts that aren’t quite so annoying. Though it may be that they’re just annoying because they are repeated so often.
Use Town’s in-house media team to add content around the game
Given the streams are the main way fans get to watch the team play now it would be nice if a bit more effort could be put into the production before and after the game. Listening to the Radio Leeds buildup and having footage of the warm ups is OK but is a bit of a lazy option.
The club already produce pre-match discussion videos on their YouTube channel that are pretty good. They tend to feature Stephen Chicken from The Examiner, a Town player and someone else with a connection to the opposition. The one before the Norwich game was great because Rob Green provided some good stories about his time at Town. Playing this type of video before the kick off on the stream would give fans more reason to log in early and maybe even help the club to rebuild the strained relationship with fans.
Post-match coverage, as far as I can tell, is just the match stats cycling round while Radio Leeds begin their inquest into the game. Streaming post-match interviews seems like an obvious way to add something worth watching to the stream. Again, I think the club already stream immediate reactions on their social media channels so it wouldn’t be a huge departure from what they already do.
Improve the production quality during the game
In most of the games I’ve watched on the streams there has been a moment where the person directing the action has cut away to a replay and it’s meant they’ve missed something that was happening live on the pitch.
This almost never happens on a Sky or BBC live game but the people involved in producing the games for iFollow don’t seem to do it with the same level of care and skill that major broadcasters use. It means that you come back from a replay and are plunged into the middle of a sequence of play and you don’t know what went before.
Make the process of accessing the streams as simple as possible
My final issue with the iFollow service is around how fans are expected to access streams. It feels like the system they are using was not designed for the volume of people using it and this has resulted in technical problems and poorly designed interfaces stopping fans from watching games.
I know quite a few people that have missed the first twenty minutes of a game because they’ve not been able to get past the login screen, have not been able to get the stream to load on their particular browser or any number of other technical bugs that seem to crop up.
This season the process of accessing matches has been further complicated by needing to use a code for every match. I’ve no idea why this is needed but I think it’s something to do with the EFL’s policies. This change meant many fans accidentally paid £10 to watch the first match of the season because they didn’t know where to put the code alongside many who just couldn’t work the system out and missed the game all together.
I believe this has now been resolved with refunds and free codes for last weekend’s game at Brentford but it’s still poor. If a few people can’t work out how to use a system then it’s probably their fault, when hundreds of people can’t work it out then it’s the system that needs to be blamed.
Do you have any ideas about how to make this service better? Put your thoughts in the comments below.
Never had an issue with the ifollow platform, everything has worked seamlessly. BUT, and yes, it’s a very big but, the commentary is dire. It’s consistently a good 5-10 seconds behind the action and it’s infuriating. It was so bad against Norwich I ended up switching the sound off. And the least said about Glennon the better.
It seems there’s going to be a new way of accessing ifollow as well with the email address linked to the SC automatically giving access without needing a code.
We’ll see how that goes in Friday.
As for watching it in Sky instead, no chance. I sacked them years ago.
Thanks Steven, I can’t believe I forgot to mention the syncing problems with the commentary, I’ve updated the article now.
I’ve previously thought Glennon was too miserable but I’m earning to him as time goes by. Maybe it’s because I’m getting increasingly miserable watching Town too!
The system for Forest sounds more straight forward but we’ll have to see how it works on the day.
I am a season card holder. I did not get into the Norwich match until 3.20 having started the process at 2.30. I placed 3 comments on the “live chat” with no response. Last Thursday I received an apology and a complimentary code for the Brentford game due to my complaint which was a pleasant surprise. I had a trial run the day I received the code which was successful. I logged in at 2.30 on the Saturday and again went round in circles before receiving an “invalid code” message. I then gave up.
That must have been really annoying Terry. It adds insult to injury that you’ve missed out on twenty minutes of one game and all of the other.
My season audio pass was renewed for this year, which should enable me to view 2foll match” video, unfortunately it doesn’t, after a number of emails and chat sessions(2 of which were terminated without so much as a goodbye. My latest chat ended with a statement that they were aware of the problem and were working on it with a probable resolution in a few days. I await with bated breath.
It sounds like the support is pretty poor if there’s a problem with the service. Unfortunately, being aware of a problem and actually fixing it are very different things.
Not had a problem with sound quality apart from the terrible syncing. However, I’ve had all sorts of problems logging in & missed bits of games. I’m quite technical and so if I’m struggling then I wouldn’t be surprised if some people have just given up. They seem to have linked the login to email addresses now and so maybe that will make it easier but boy is the interface clunky.
We shouldn’t be surprise though because, as you say, it wasn’t designed for a high volume of users & it takes a long time to redesign & fully test IT .
I do feel sorry for less tech-savvy Town fans as these issues with the system are stopping them from watching games.
I think the system is just about fit for the purpose of a few hundred ex-pat fans to tune in but now it’s the main way fans access games it could do with some improvements. You’re right though, any changes are unlikely to be quick.
I couldn’t get past the login for the Norwich game, my complaints to both the club and ifollow have not been responded to.
I will give it one final go this Friday but I’m not optimistic.
That’s not good enough from either the club or iFollow. Nobody expects these kinds of systems to be perfect but if it goes wrong they should make every effort to fix it, not just ignore people.
If it helps, I’ve found Google Chrome to consistently work with iFollow. For whatever reason, other Web browsers don’t sound to be as reliable.