YouTube TV Service Suffers Outage in Middle of England-Croatia World Cup Semifinal

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – YouTube TV, Google’s internet-delivered subscription TV service, was hit with nationwide outages Wednesday — right in the middle of Fox’s broadcast of the 2018 World Cup semifinal match between England and Croatia.

The service interruption also came in the middle of men’s quarterfinal matches at Wimbledon, which is broadcast in the U.S. on ESPN.

On Twitter, YouTube TV acknowledged the technical problems, saying in a post at noon Pacific, “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’s support team was pointing users to the Fox Sports apps and websites to watch the World Cup match .

At 12:58 p.m. PT, YouTube TV’s Twitter account  posted  that service had been restored. “We are so sorry about the service interruption and we understand your frustration. If you continue to experience issues let @TeamYouTube know,” YouTube said in the tweet.

It wasn’t the first time YouTube TV has glitched out: This May, the service went down during Game 2 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics. On Wednesday, customers took to social media to complain about YouTube TV’s latest outage.

Google launched YouTube TV in April 2017, and it now offers a core lineup of over 50 traditional broadcast and cable networks. The YouTube TV “skinny bundle” was originally priced at $35, then YouTube raised the price to $40 per month for new subscribers this spring after adding Turner’s networks.

YouTube TV — pitched at younger, mobile-oriented consumers — is available across the U.S. in markets representing about 85% of the nation’s TV households.