Nigerian GoTV subscribers, particularly football enthusiasts, were left disappointed and frustrated on Tuesday night when multiple channels suddenly went offline. The unexpected outage occurred just as the highly anticipated Champions League returned, leaving many customers demanding compensation from Multichoice, GoTV’s parent company.
Popular sports networks such as SS BLITZ Africa, SS Football Africa, SS La Liga Africa, SS Select 1, SS Select 2, and ESPN were affected. Several non-sports channels, such as M-Net Movies 4, ROK, Africa Magic Epic, TNT Africa, Al Jazeera, CNN International, Arise News, TVC News Nigeria, and Channels Television, were also impacted.
According to Developing Telecoms, the outage resulted from a severe power failure on Intelsat 33e, a geostationary satellite serving Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia-Pacific.
Multichoice spokesperson Caroline Oghuma confirmed the disruption, stating, “We are experiencing a temporary disruption in our services due to a technical issue with one of our satellite providers, Intelsat.”
Subscribers expressed frustration and disappointment, criticizing Multichoice for the lack of prompt communication. Many took to social media to vent their frustrations, seeking explanations and compensation for the interrupted service.
According to Punch Metro , Sanjo, a football viewing centre owner in Ojodu Berger, lamented, “I’ve never been in this situation before. I use both GoTV and DSTV. On Champions League nights, there are usually many matches, so I use GoTV to show the games that my customers want to watch… I was shocked when I couldn’t find any of the sports channels.”
Adebola Oluwatosin, a devoted Real Madrid fan, demanded compensation, saying, “They need to compensate us. Since this is a monthly subscription, will they extend the expiration date to account for the days the channels were unavailable? We need answers.”
Another frustrated subscriber, who wished to remain anonymous, shared his disappointment: “I paid for a service that I didn’t receive. It’s unacceptable. Multichoice needs to take responsibility and make it right.”
Multichoice assured customers that they are working to restore services. “We are working to restore services for all our customers,” Oghuma stated.
However, the company is yet to announce a timeline for resolving the issue or providing compensation to affected subscribers. As the outage continues, subscribers remain uncertain about when they can access their paid channels again.
The disruption has sparked concerns about the reliability of GoTV’s services, with many subscribers questioning the company’s ability to provide uninterrupted entertainment.
As the Champions League continues, GoTV subscribers eagerly await a resolution to this issue, hoping to catch their favorite teams in action without further interruptions.
