Kayo Sports review: streaming service hits the ground running - 27th November 2018

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Kayo features more than 50 sports, and you can mix and match live events and replays on a single screen.

By Adam Turner

A streaming service which has clearly benefited from some thought into what Aussie sports fans really want, Kayo Sports has the potential to be a knockout with viewers.

You might begrudge paying Foxtel to watch your favourite sporting events, especially as the pay TV giant has locked away more Australian cricket this summer, but at least Fox Sports' Kayo is a more affordable option after the Foxtel Now price hike.

At first glance it's hard to see why Fox Sports would bother launching its own streaming service at all, considering the bulk of Kayo's content is available on Foxtel Now.

It's not until you take Kayo for a spin that you appreciate its appeal. It's not just the content; Kayo's real appeal is the user experience. It makes it easy to find the live event or replay you're interested in, watch it on different devices and even engage picture-in-picture to view up to four events at once.

All of this comes with the added benefit of "no spoilers" mode — enabled by default to ensure you don't accidentally see the score when navigating through the menus to find a replay — and the ability to watch the start of a match still in progress.

Giving some thought to the user experience might seem like a no-brainer, but if you've fought with the countless clunky streaming apps that content providers have inflicted on us over the years then you'll appreciate that Kayo is particularly friendly.

After a 14-day free trial, Kayo will set you back $25 or $35 per month (with no lock-in contract), depending on whether you want to watch sport on two or three devices simultaneously.

Thankfully there's no limit on the number of devices you can register and, unlike Netflix, your choice of plan doesn't impact on the picture quality. Kayo streams in 1080p, but can scale this down if your home/mobile broadcast connection isn't up to the task.

Accessing the same sports content on the Foxtel Now streaming service would cost you $52 per month, once you paid for a basic package like Pop/Lifestyle and then the premium Sports package, and only lets you register five devices with a limit of two concurrent streams.

On Kayo, the live channels include Fox Sports News, Fox Sports channels 501 to 507, ESPN 1/2 and BeIN Sports 1/2/3. They offer more than 50 sports between them including live AFL, NRL and cricket.

Compared to Foxtel Now's sports package, you're only missing out on Eurosport and the English Premier League club channels like Chelsea TV (although they cost extra on Now).

Meanwhile, if you step up to the sports package on a full home Foxtel cable/satellite service — paying around $70 per month — you also get the three Sky racing channels, racing.com, and Main Event for pay-per-view.

Of course if you upgrade to a satellite-based iQ4 set-top box, you could also tap into Foxtel's new 4K channel. There's no word as to if or when 4K will come to Foxtel's streaming services, but the pay TV giant is likely to hold off to encourage people to upgrade to a full service.

Kayo is available on mobile devices and browsers as well as set-top boxes, and can be sent to screens via AirPlay or Google Cast.

Kayo's live sports channels are on less than a 10-second delay, which is impressive considering that online simulcasts typically lag at least 30 seconds behind the action, forcing you to stay off social media to avoid spoilers.

The picture quality is generally crisp and smooth, even when you're watching multiple streams. Of course it remains to be seen how Kayo holds up under pressure, and Fox Sports will be working hard this summer to ensure we don't see a repeat of Optus Sport's own goal which forced it to hand the World Cup back to SBS.

Unlike with Telstra's own streaming sports apps for the AFL, NRL and Netball, Kayo viewers don't have the advantage of LTE Broadcast technology behind the scenes to reduce mobile network congestion.

You don't need to be a Telstra customer to sign up for Kayo but, if you are you can add the cost to your monthly Telstra bill, although Kayo's data isn't unmetered.

When Kayo first launched in beta a few weeks ago it was only available via a desktop browser, but this week's launch adds iOS and Android apps with support for AirPlay and Chromecast streaming. There's also an Apple TV app, with plans to add Kayo to the Telstra TV set-top boxes and perhaps other devices down the track.

Just like Netflix, Kayo lets you create multiple user profiles which keep track of your viewing habits, making it easier to share an account with the rest of your household. You can even nominate your favourite sporting codes and teams, with the option of notifications when matches are about to start and when your team scores.

The interface is mostly intuitive, with a Netflix-style home page highlighting the live events and replays most likely to grab your interest. If a match has already begun, it's easy to start from the beginning rather than dive into the live action.

Unfortunately it can be tricky to find live channels which aren't related to your favourite sports. Kayo is so focused on showing you what it thinks you want that the list of live channels is buried way down on the home screen.

Along with the live channels and replays, Kayo's big selling point compared to other Fox Sports services is additional content like press conference footage and previous game highlights. Along with full highlights packages you'll also find "minis" that make it easy to catch up on sports when you don't have time to watch the full event.

We're still waiting for a live stats feed, plus Kayo is also promising to add alternative camera angles but don't hold your breath.

Australians were promised multi-angle broadcasting when digital TV first launched in 2001 but it only lasted one summer of Nine's cricket coverage. Instead the free-to-air broadcasters would rather screen repeats of Gilligan's Island on their extra digital channels.

Along with the play, pause and skip forward/back buttons, Kayo's onscreen menu lets you watch in slow-mo, 1.5x or 2x. You can also scroll along the timeline, and the option to see highlights flagged is disabled by default to avoid spoilers.

One of Kayo's biggest features is split screen mode, letting you watch two streams on a smartphone or up to four on other devices.

Split screen mode is simple to engage, with a good choice of layouts, although adding channels is a little confusing at first. You can watch a mix of live events and replays, controlling each stream individually and switching between audio feeds. It also works on handheld devices, although controlling the individual streams is a bit more cumbersome.

If you're flinging the picture from your computer or handheld devices to your television, one frustration is that only Apple's AirPlay supports split screen mode. Switch to Google's Chromecast and only the first stream appears on your television; admittedly a limitation of Chromecast streaming rather than the Kayo app.

Dubbing Kayo "the Netflix of sport" might sound like marketing hyperbole but it's actually a fair call. Fox Sports has delivered a slick ecosystem of apps which really focus on ease of use and giving viewers what they want.

You understandably might begrudge Fox Sports for locking away some of your favourite sports behind a paywall, but if you're prepared to embrace pay TV and you'd make the most of great features like split screen mode, Kayo looks like a winner this summer.

(The Sydney Morning Herald)