FuboTV built a lot if their streaming-provider reputation on being the streaming home for live sports, especially soccer.
That made Wednesday’s technical issues all the more frustrating for a lot of subscribers, as many couldn’t log in at all on a day that featured a men’s World Cup semifinal between France and Morocco.
Interestingly, FuboTV’s statement on the issues termed the problem a “cyber-related incident”, and not a technical glitch within their control. That would seem to hint at some kind of external attack or other issue in that vein.
Apologies to customers who are having issues with the France vs Morocco game. We are addressing the issue. Please note you can stream this game directly on FOX as well for free: https://t.co/AYBr6WO3nO
— Fubo (@fuboTV) December 14, 2022
FuboTV provided a link to Fox Sports so subscribers could stream it there, though it wasn’t quite that simple for some who tried that route.
Same for me – trash company
— Milwaukee Zach (@Milwaukee_Zach) December 14, 2022
60 minutes doesn’t cover entire game
— Rieko (@Rieko0dancing) December 14, 2022
This is actually the second men’s World Cup in a row to see a top streaming television provider face issues during a semifinal match. In 2018, YouTube TV service went down for a portion of England-Croatia, leading to the company offering users a credit to their next billing cycle as a gesture of apology.
YouTube TV viewers experienced a service interruption at a brutal time on Wednesday. Croatia and England were tied 1-1 in a World Cup semifinal (which Croatia went on to win 2-1), when YouTube TV crashed.
Understandably, soccer fans were quite angry about the outage, which reportedly lasted about an hour. YouTube TV sent out another tweet apologizing and announcing that the game was back on the streaming service.
And on Thursday, YouTube TV sent out an e-mail to subscribers offering a free week of service following the World Cup outage.
FuboTV could be looking at something like that here, and considering a lot of the vitriol available on Twitter from angry subscribers, that might be the wise approach to try and repair their customer relations. According to The Verge, service was down for most of the day:
FuboTV’s status page indicates that the service is still down and has been experiencing issues since around 9:20AM ET, affecting both account creation and management as well as streaming. When I try to open the FuboTV app on my TV, the service displays an endless loading screen. In an update posted at 6PM ET, FuboTV says it’s “beginning to see some recovery to the ongoing issue.”
Streaming providers offer a lot of benefits to subscribers, albeit rising costs are certainly becoming a concern. That said, Wednesday’s issue is another example of how sometimes, there are few things more reliable than over-the-air network television. Hopefully some of the affected customers on Wednesday were able to take advantage of that option.
About Jay Rigdon
Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.