Tottenham supporters encountered significant technical difficulties attempting to watch the club's first pre-season friendly against MK Dons, with many missing a spectacular opening goal from new signing Mateus Fernandes. The issues primarily affected the club's in-house broadcast channel, SPURSPLAY.
Fans paid for annual or One Hotspur memberships to access SPURSPLAY, which was scheduled to broadcast all of the club's pre-season fixtures. The problems began just three minutes into the match when Fernandes scored with a volley from outside the box. While Tottenham's official X account shared the goal, directing users to SPURSPLAY, many fans reported being unable to access the stream.
Complaints on social media described the service as "pure garbage" and highlighted error messages stating "We are sorry, an error occurred. Please retry in a few minutes" or "It seems this application has become very popular, and its available rate limit has been reached." Some users reported intermittent freezing and the stream failing entirely, leading to demands for refunds and criticism of the club's repeated failure to manage expected viewership for friendly matches.
This match was the first in Tottenham's pre-season schedule. The team is set to travel to New Zealand to play Auckland FC on July 26, followed by matches against Sydney FC and Chelsea in Sydney on July 29 and August 1, respectively. The club will then face Getafe and Hoffenheim twice before commencing their Premier League season against Brentford on August 22.