FuboTV goes kaput during World Cup semifinals, blames “criminal cyber attack”

Sports-focused streaming-video service FuboTV said a “criminal cyber attack” was responsible for a prolonged outage that prevented subscribers from viewing most of Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal between France and Morocco.

“The incident was not related to any bandwidth constraints on Fubo’s part,” the company said. “We were instead the target of a criminal cyber attack.”

There was no indication in the FuboTV releases if customer data was accessed or downloaded or that the hack was related to a ransomware attack. The company has retained security firm Mandiant to investigate the intrusion. A spokeswoman declined to immediately answer questions and said the company would provide an update once it had more information.

“Our primary focus currently is on ensuring that the incident is fully contained and that there is no threat of further disruption for any of our customers,” FuboTV co-founder and CEO David Gandler said. “Our investigation is at an early stage, but we are committed to transparency regarding this incident.”

On social media, subscribers castigated the service for going dark shortly after the start of one of the world’s most anticipated sporting events. Some subscribers reported being able to view the latter part of the match. Others said they remained locked out of their accounts. Many said they were canceling their subscriptions in protest, although some reported receiving an error message when trying to do so.

FuboTV said last month it had 1.23 million paid subscribers in North America, a 31 percent increase from the same time last year. Elsewhere, the company had 358,000 paid subscribers. The company was founded in 2015.

The company said it reported the incident to law enforcement. This post will be updated if more details become available.