YouTube TV Suffers Outage During England-Croatia World Cup Game

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Ashley Young of England and Ante Rebic of Croatia battle for the ball during the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia semifinal match between Croatia and England at Luzhniki Stadium on July 11 in Moscow.

Ashley Young of England and Ante Rebic of Croatia battle for the ball during the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia semifinal match between Croatia and England at Luzhniki Stadium on July 11 in Moscow.

Live-streaming video service YouTube TV suffered a service disruption this afternoon causing its viewers to miss portions of Fox broadcasting’s live telecast of the England-Croatia World Cup semifinals match, but restored service before the end of the contest.

YouTube TV’s live streaming signal went down during the second half of the England-Croatia game. The service posted a tweet around 3 pm (ET), calling the timing of the streaming issues “horrible.”

[embed]https://twitter.com/YouTubeTV/status/1017121393857556485[/embed]

Within an hour, YouTube TV sent out a second tweet stating that the service was restored. YouTube TV subscribers were able to watch Croatia defeat England to advance to the World Cup final Sunday against France.  

[embed]https://twitter.com/YouTubeTV/status/1017136092041043978[/embed]

While people were tweeting about the outage, sports-centric virtual MVPD FuboTV got into the act, replying to one Twitter user looking for an alternative to "Come to @fuboTV, we have cookies.. and all games in Full HD." 

YouTube TV subscribers pay $40 a month for a lineup of more than 60 channels, including national sports services ESPN, FS1, MLB Network and NBA TV, as well as most regional sports services. As of Thursday the service had not publicly offered an explanation for the glitch.

R. Thomas Umstead
R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.