Sky Sports News fans were left in the dark as a "global technical issue" abruptly interrupted the channel's live broadcast, leaving it to air pre-recorded clips for nearly two hours. Plagued by the widespread Microsoft outage on Friday (July 19), viewers were initially plunged into uncertainty over their weekend sports viewing.
A Sky spokesperson admitted: "Due to a global technical issue, Sky Sports News is currently unable to broadcast live."
For updates on sports happenings, fans turned to alternative sources, with the company directing them to: "For all the latest sports news, scores and action, go to the Sky Sports app or website."
Despite the hiccup, Sky managed to keep its specialised channels up and running.
Golf aficionados rejoiced as the Sky Sports Golf channel continued to showcase The Open without a hitch. Cricket enthusiasts also sighed in relief knowing they could still catch England's second Test against the West Indies on the dedicated Sky cricket channel.
The channel resumed normal service just before 10am, salvaging plans for those eager to watch the Hungarian Grand Prix practice sessions on Sunday via the Sky F1 channel. Even Sky News wasn't spared, experiencing a similar outage, and displaying the message: "We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of this broadcast shortly."
The massive tech crisis has brought airlines, media giants and financial institutions to their knees with sweeping IT failures. Microsoft 365 acknowledged the chaos, saying that they are looking into what's keeping users from getting into apps and services.
"Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions," they assured this morning on X. "We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue."
