The Seven Network’s Olympic coverage set out to “push the boundaries” of sports broadcasting.

Unfortunately, the network bungled that risky push – a foray into live mobile sport – as the “Olympics on 7” app failed early in the Games and Seven was beset by a raft of complaints over too many adverts and scheduling decisions.

Australia’s exclusive Olympic broadcaster was criticised about ads on the paid subscription app throughout the Games, which followed anger about its stream constantly freezing.

The Seven Network was then pilloried for too much cross promotion, not enough live sport, little variety in sports and focusing too much on Australians.

Victoria University media researcher Marc Scott told The New Daily the Olympic app debacle was the main negative of the Seven Network’s Olympics coverage.

“When you changed between channels on the app – the paid or unpaid version – you’d always get a 15-second ad,” Mr Scott said.

“The premium account [$19] wasn’t ad free, which is what people associate with subscription services,” he added. “If you’re presenting something new, which Seven did with the app, the little hiccups at the start did not help in guiding audiences across to using it.

“But having the app available was pushing the boundaries of sport broadcasting in Australia.”

The Seven Network paid a reported $170 million to broadcast the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, plus the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

Seven enrages viewers

Rio 2016 was a ratings success for the Seven Network. Nine of its top 10 broadcasts attracted more than 2.15 million viewers.

The 10th-best broadcast attracted 1.98 million viewers. The most-watched Olympics event was the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay win (2.684 million). The Olympics also helped the Seven Network open its biggest ever ratings share lead (6.4 per cent) over the Nine Network, according to AdNews.

But that didn’t mean those watching were satisfied. Viewers were overwhelmingly scathing online. Gripes included:

Moving compelling sport onto the app

Best thing on now is an intense women's badminton final. As usual @7olympics relegate it to app & show pentathletes swimming on TV instead.

— Athas Zafiris (@ArtSapphire) August 19, 2016

Showing replays when there were live events available

https://twitter.com/thelandofkates/status/764938718041878529

Being too Australia-centric

https://twitter.com/darcstei/status/765541596901158912

But then missing Aussies, too

disgusting that there was no rhythmic gymnastics coverage when we had aussie athletes competing, shame channel 7

— anti (@antisux666) August 20, 2016

Cross promotion

Channel 7 is the King of awful cross-promotion #Rio2016 #7Sport

— Karlos Johncock (@karlossneaky) August 14, 2016

Lack of variety

#Rio2016 coverage by Channel 7 beset by the same issues every 4 years: 1) Too much advertising 2) Too parochial and 3) too much swimming

— Rebecca Stewart (@GallopingSkirt) August 8, 2016

Basil Zempilas’ commentary failings

So clearly @7Sport from that phelps highlight package you can see that Basil needs to go and get Bruce back on the swimming commentary

— ben egan (@bennyblanco1685) August 14, 2016

But praise for Bruce McAvaney

https://twitter.com/damiantardio/status/766820583963144193

Mr Scott explained some reasons why the broadcaster had displeased some viewers like it had in the examples above.

“When you are trying to fund expensive media rights, you would expect cross promotion,” he said, adding that when it came to criticism of not showing a variety of sports: “The Seven Network argument would be that it was available on the paid app. The option was there to watch every sport.”

Lack of live sport “comes down to time delay”, he said.

“In prime time spots they were trying to condense a lot. A whole day’s play into a very small window.”