Compensation plan revealed for NFL’s Game Pass Europe

The providers of Game Pass Europe, the official live streaming service of American football league the NFL, have unveiled a 20 per cent discount to annual subscription fees as a means of compensation for the issues that have dogged the new-look service.

With an annual subscription to the service costing £140 (€152/$181) in the UK, Game Pass Europe said discounts will be applied for all customers, regardless of whether they had encountered difficulties.

A statement read: “It is our goal to deliver to the NFL and its fans an outstanding experience with Game Pass Europe. Fans have experienced difficulties with the service and we apologise for that.

“Whether you have experienced problems or not we will be giving you a 20 per cent discount on the original subscription price you paid. This is our way of saying thank you for being part of the Game Pass team and will apply whether you signed up for Season Pro or Essential.”

On Sunday, the providers of Game Pass Europe said they would compensate customers after apologising for another weekend in which the platform was hit by major technical issues. The statement on Sunday evening came after Game Pass customers again used social media to vent their anger at the standard of service from the platform, which has come under new management this season.

Game Pass Europe is now being provided by OverTier, a joint venture between global sports marketing company Bruin Sports Capital and advertising and public relations giant WPP to run the OTT business of the NFL throughout Europe. 

The Bruin-WPP venture was formed in June in order to drive expansion of the Game Pass over-the-top service throughout Europe. Through the venture, sports media and technology firm Deltatre, a Bruin company, is powering Game Pass across a combined 61 European countries and territories.

This includes the development of a new product optimised for cross-platform viewing. Deltatre is also managing end-to-end technology delivery, streaming, user-facing applications, back-end support, payments and customer service.

Digital media services are being led by sports marketing agency, Two Circles, which is part of GroupM’s ESP Properties and supported by fellow WPP agencies MEC and Ogilvy. Two Circles is working alongside Bruin and Deltatre to grow Game Pass’ European subscriber base.

The weekend’s service disruption came after Deltatre and the NFL were forced to apologise on Friday after it emerged that fake reviews of the Game Pass app were being posted in order to counter the negative reaction the new-look service has received since launch.