One of the perils of streaming bundles is when a significant outage happens, which we’ve previously seen with DirecTV Now, YouTube TV and more. Well, a particularly embarrassing one for YouTube TV came Tuesday night, which just happened to be a major night on the sports calendar, featuring both the NBA’s opening doubleheader and Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. And that latter one, on FS1, has had a giant YouTube TV ad behind home plate as one of the revolving left-side ads, as seen below. (The whole NLCS is also presented by corporate sibling Google Assistant, as seen in the static right-side ad.)
This was part of a wider outage that saw every video on YouTube.com and the app delivering playback errors for many, but the live sports angle of the YouTube TV outage is particularly relevant here. Here are some of the tweets from the many people affected:
Oh awesome YouTubeTV just crashed for everyone.
It's ok, it's not like I need to watch anything tonight for my livelihood or anything
— John Karalis
(@John_Karalis) October 17, 2018
@YouTubeTV Not cool during @MLB playoffs. Any update? pic.twitter.com/VxVhA93Yfd
— Rob Beattie (@RCBeattie) October 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/MKing_89/status/1052366662811422722
https://twitter.com/abeghou/status/1052366746445914112
https://twitter.com/TheGussReport/status/1052377977638465536
Since @YouTubeTV went down, I’ve caught up on some classic tv via the antenna. Watched a few mins of WKRP in Cincinnati, then I switched over to Barney Miller. Kids, this is what it was like to watch TV in the 80s. Except I don’t have to put foil on the rabbit ears.#YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/k2Vx3i6fuW
— Chad Gallivanter (@ChadGallivanter) October 17, 2018
Tweets there show issues started as early as 9:10 p.m. Eastern (during the postgame of Game 3 of the ALCS on TBS), and as per Down Detector, reports of issues really spiked around 9:20 p.m. Eastern. And as of 10 p.m. Eastern, the service remained down for many. For their part, YouTube tweeted that they’re working on it, and apologized for the inconvenience:
Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We're working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
We’ll see when it gets fixed, and if YouTube TV offers free subscription extenders as they did after the World Cup semifinal crash this summer. The service has really tried to emphasize its sports content, including with deals as the presenting sponsor of the World Series (both last year and this year) and the NBA Finals (beginning earlier this year), but this certainly wasn’t a good moment for many who have turned to YouTube TV for their sports fix.
[Photo from Matthew King on Twitter]