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.
Hey everyone — sincere apologies for streaming issues with YouTube TV. The timing is horrible but we're working to be up and running again ASAP!
— YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) July 11, 2018
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 we're back! Enjoy the rest of #ENGCRO by going to https://t.co/DYqXd9XXAr.
We are so sorry about the service interruption and we understand your frustration. If you continue to experience issues let @TeamYouTube know.
— YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) July 11, 2018
And on Thursday, YouTube TV sent out an e-mail to subscribers offering a free week of service following the World Cup outage.
YouTube TV offers a free week of service to make up for Croatia v. England World Cup outage. https://t.co/uP8R8va7vY
— John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) July 13, 2018
Hi there,
We’re really sorry for the recent YouTube TV outage during the FIFA World Cup Semifinal. We love our TV as much as you do, and our goal is to make sure that you can access your favorite TV – whenever and however you want.
Any recordings of the full game or anything else you where recording should now be available uninterrupted in the Library tab. If you are still experiencing issues, please let us know via email, phone, live chat, or @TeamYouTube on Twitter.
To help make this right, we’d like to give you a week of free service. You’ll receive another email soon confirming your account has been credited.
Thanks for sticking with us.
It’s certainly a good move by YouTube TV, but soccer — and especially Croatia — diehards are probably still a bit ticked off by the outage.

About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.
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