People hoping to watch the latest sports highlights on “SportsCenter” on Friday morning had to make do with an ESPN alternative.
A global technical outage caused chaos across the world on Friday morning, meaning the media giant was unable to air its flagship show, instead airing “Unsportsmanlike,” hosted by Courtney Cronin and Freddie Coleman.
“Due to a Microsoft outage, @SportsCenter is offline, so for at least the next hour, @ESPN, ESPN 2 and @ESPNU will feature @UnSportsESPN with me and @ColemanESPN.” Cronin tweeted at 6:58 a.m. ET..
At 7 a.m., ESPN showed the New York City skyline before handing the show over to Cronin and Coleman.
“The Microsoft outage happened around 1 a.m. Eastern time. Courtney, Microsoft is in big trouble and pretty much everything is down until they fix this problem,” Coleman joked to those confused as to why “SportsCenter” was off the air.
Cronin continued, “Freddie, I thought I was the only one struggling this morning. I woke up, I showered, I did everything I was supposed to do, I was struggling to put on my eyelashes. I was late to the show and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is the worst start to my morning ever,’ but it turns out there were other people out there who had a worse start to their morning than me. So if any of you can’t get your plane off right now, at least you’re listening to our show on ESPN Radio.”
The issue stems from CrowdStrike releasing a faulty software update that affects Microsoft Windows, which many organizations rely on.
Other sports organisations have also faced problems due to cyber issues, with Sky Sports in the UK crashing, James Dolan’s Sphere in Las Vegas experiencing similar issues and Manchester United’s ticketing site crashing ahead of the start of season ticket sales. From the Daily Mail.
Paris Olympics organizers told Reuters. These issues have caused problems with certification and uniform delivery.
“We have activated contingency plans to ensure continued operations,” tournament organisers said in a statement, ESPN reported.
“At present, the impact is limited, particularly in relation to the distribution of uniforms and certificates.
“The Paris 2024 ticketing system is unaffected. Work on venue preparation continues as normal and there is no risk to the work schedule. The torch relay is proceeding along the route as normal.”
