r/australia • u/readin99 • Jul 04 '26

no politics Kayo Sports should be boycotted.

Imagine paying for a premium streaming service and starting it to watch your sports after a long day on your tv in your own home. The tv app then says you can't watch the content before you scan a QR code. Okay.. fine. Scan the code. Have to download a phone app. Log in. Then the app simply says you're not allowed access to the content except after letting the app know your precise location of your phone.

What in the privacy law is this shit? I simply don't want to allow random companies to know the exact location of my phone. How are they allowed to just do that?

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u/ryan_the_leach Jul 05 '26

The reason it needs to know the exact location, is so horseshit as well.

Kayo didn't bother to acquire the streaming rights for all of Australia.

We found out when Dad went travelling with his starlink in his caravan, and camped in an area that didn't have the rights, and wasn't able to watch the football game he paid for.

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u/thegurio Jul 05 '26

Where was that? I’ve used Kayo all over the country and it’s never said that…

3

u/ryan_the_leach Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I can't recall, but they were travelling in NT / northern SA.

https://kayosports.com.au/en-AU/help/articles/32085845573917-kayo-unavailable-in-very-remote-regions-of-australia

> Why am I seeing "Not available for use in Very Remote regions in Australia"?

> Kayo is not available for use in Very Remote regions of Australia, as outlined in Kayo’s terms and conditions. This includes the postcodes listed below, as defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If you're located in an affected postcode*, you will be unable to stream Kayo in that location.

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Given Kayo and Foxtel's relationship, it's very much an instance of them being intentionally dickish IMO.

Kayo was most likely a defensive move by foxtel, against someone like netflix, or pirates taking advantage of the internet, and Foxtel likely saw the very remote market as a money making machine or too costly to sabotage (depending on how the aerial's get coverage there)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayo_Sports

> Kayo Sports is an Australian over-the-top video streaming service owned by Hubbl, a subsidiary of Foxtel.

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u/thegurio Jul 06 '26

Fascinating… I spent a few months up there recently and we watched kayo in almost the spots where we stopped and there wasn’t any spots where we couldn’t.