ESPN's fantasy football app and website left "millions of users in the dark" yesterday, as they "faltered" on the first Sunday of the NFL season, according to Javier David of CNBC.com. Numerous users "took to Twitter to complain that the application wasn't working." That included U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who wrote, "Seriously @ESPNFantasy this is not good. Opening day? Really? #fail." David noted almost "five hours after first acknowledging the outage, ESPN Fantasy Sports tweeted that it had fixed the issue -- but many irate fantasy users were far from placated" (CNBC.com, 9/11). CNN MONEY's Jackie Wattles noted the app and website "became at least partially operational for some users" around 4:00pm ET. However, ESPN indicated that it was "still working to fully resolve the issues" (MONEY.CNN.com, 9/11). NBC’s Carson Daly noted just as "nine games around the country were about to get kicked off, ESPN’s app went down." Daly: "Social media did not take that outage lightly” (“Today,” NBC, 9/12).
DREADED GLITCH AWARD: ADWEEK's Steve Safran reported DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket streaming service experienced "buffering and quality issues" beginning with the 1:00pm kickoffs, and some viewers were not able "to access a stream at all." The company replied to some people complaining about the issue, "suggesting they check their computer settings or that they call a help line." Safran noted there were "clearly network issues" on his feed from 1:00-1:30pm, but his service got "much better" during the following half-hour. DirecTV yesterday offered Sunday Ticket free "to its TV subscribers to give them a taste" of the service, so that may have "played a role in the streaming load." However, users were "left in the dark and the company’s support crew made them feel as though the issue was their fault" (ADWEEK.com, 9/11).
