Football fans watching the England-Croatia World Cup semifinal last week on YouTube TV in the U.S. were gobsmacked and miffed when the service went down in the middle of the match. On Thursday, YouTube sent an email apology to its subscribers, offering each a free week of service.
This year’s FIFA World Cup is setting records for overwhelming volume of streaming video. Akamai said the record set for streaming video for the entirety of the 2014 tournament was exceeded after just the first 10 days of this year’s event.
The outage on the year-old YouTube TV service was national. YouTube almost immediately began tweeting apologies and promising to get the game feed back up and streaming. It took about an hour.
YouTube TV also glitched out in May during Game 2 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics.
The apology email starts, “We’re really sorry for the recent YouTube TV outage during the FIFA World Cup Semifinal,” and goes on to say, “To help make this right, we’d like to give you a week of free service. You’ll receive another email soon confirming your account has been credited. Thanks for sticking with us.”
One week of the monthly $40 YouTube TV bill would make that a $10 credit.
For those who were attempting to record the match on their DVRs, YouTube said it will ensure that a recording of the full, uninterrupted match will be available in subscribers’ “Library” tabs.