Kiwi football fans left fuming after live coverage cuts out

Manchester City's players captain Vincent Kompany, center, holds the Cup and celebrates with teammates after being crowned Premier League Champions, something many fans missed. Photo / AP

New Zealand football fans were left disappointed this morning when live coverage of the premier league decider cut out moments before the trophy presentation.

The outage affecting online coverage from Coliseum Sports Media, which secured the rights to the English Premier League last year, lasted four minutes, by which time many viewers had switched off.

Following Manchester City's 2-0 defeat of West Ham, but before the players had a chance to lift the coveted cup, Kiwi soccer fans who pulled themselves out of bed for the 2am kick-off were greeted with a screen displaying the message "This match has ended".

"So @p - l - pass ends before trophy presentation," @ahmadnz tweeted, along with a photo of the screen.

Another user, Keegan Check, posted: "@p - l - pass it is effectively what you watch 9 months worth of games to see after all ... city fans will be well pissed."

Those who stayed in front of their screens were rewarded when the feed returned for the remaining 25 minutes of live coverage, including the trophy ceremony, a Coliseum spokesman said.

However, the outage was "definitely something that shouldn't happen".

Colleagues who were monitoring the feed this morning said it was the result of a technical issue with the feed coming out of the UK, the spokesman said.

He said it was resolved promptly with no live match coverage or the trophy presentation missed. Coliseum would not be refunding subscribers for the disruption, and had not received any complaints from disgruntled viewers.

Subscribers were now able to see the coverage of what they had missed.

At the time of the cut, the online station's PremierLeaguePass Twitter account jokingly posted a comment blaming Liverpool fans.

"Sorry for the outage, some Liverpool fan in the uk control centre cut the feed," it said.

The Merseyside club lost out on the title by two points, despite beating Newcastle 2-1 on the final day of the league.