YouTube TV Offers One-Week Credit After World Cup Outage

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Google is offering YouTube TV subscribers a credit for one week of free service after the internet-streaming TV service went down on July 11  — right in the middle of the World Cup semifinal match between England and Croatia.

“We’re really sorry for the recent outage during the FIFA World Cup Semifinal,” YouTube said in an email to subscribers Thursday. “To help make this right, we’d like to give you a week of free service.”

One week of free YouTube TV amounts to $10, under the current $40-per-month pricing for new customers . Customers who signed up before March 13, 2018, on the original $35 monthly plan are grandfathered in on that price.

The U.S.-wide outage of YouTube TV on Wednesday lasted a little over an hour before service was restored just before 1 p.m. Pacific.

In the message to customers Thursday, YouTube TV said recordings of the England-Croatia match (which Croatia won, 2-1) — as well as any other DVR recordings customers had scheduled during the outage — should now be available in the “Library” tab.