TBS experiences outages at start of Tigers-Guardians ALDS game

Broadcast outages happen. You hope that they don’t happen in the middle of a crucial playoff game.

Unfortunately for TNT Sports, that happened early in Game 2 of the American League Division Series between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians.

TBS trying to broadcast Tigers vs. Guardians Game 2: pic.twitter.com/QYLfNqH0FH

— FanDuel (@FanDuel) October 7, 2024

TBS executives watching their network crash during a playoff game pic.twitter.com/0P0Dpwd0d5

— sky (@GonsolinRBW) October 7, 2024

The transmission issue seemingly impacted viewers watching on both TBS and truTV and across several different distributors, suggesting that the source of the technical mishap was on TNT Sports’ side of the equation. The game feed went down for several minutes, and fans were left wondering what happened.

Come on @TBSNetwork an outage of the #ALDS @tigers @CleGuardians for over 5 minutes?

— joedekock (@joedekock) October 7, 2024

for anyone wondering about if something is wrong with their cable box… there isnt

TBS is just not transmitting anything? pic.twitter.com/Dj3kz1PZxf

— jaiden (@steph_turkey) October 7, 2024

Play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson and analyst Jeff Francoeur made no mention of the technical difficulties during the broadcast, which went dark for a large portion of viewers.

It’s an unfortunate blunder for TNT Sports, especially considering that the MLB playoffs will arguably be the company’s crown jewel if they lose NBA rights after this upcoming season, as expected.

Luckily, whatever the issue was has seemingly been fixed, and the rest of the broadcast has gone on as expected. Hopefully, for baseball fans, this was an isolated incident.

UPDATE: TBS says the issue was caused by Solar Satellite Interference, also known as a ‘sun outage’ or ‘sunspot,’ which happens when the sun’s solar activity disrupts satellite signals.