Subscribers of the pay television platform YouTube TV were unable to watch much of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Final between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics on Wednesday.
The issue stemmed from an apparent technical glitch that made TNT available to streamers of the Google-backed pay television service, which made the channel unavailable to streamers across the country.
“TNT is temporarily down,” a message read to YouTube TV subscribers who tried to access the service on a wide variety of devices Wednesday evening. The streaming service said it was “working on it, and we’ll be back soon,” but provided no specific information on what caused the outage.
The channel came back online around 11:15 p.m. Eastern Time, but by then, the game had ended. YouTube TV is a sponsor of the NBA finals.
if you have an issue watching the Miami Heat vs. Boston Celtics game on TNT, we’re aware of it & our team is working on a fix – thx so much for your patience!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) May 18, 2023
Streamers were able to watch a live feed of TNT by downloading the TNT app on their phones, tablets or some smart TV devices like Roku or Amazon Fire TV, then using their YouTube TV username and password to authenticate their service. Others decided to temporarily switch away from YouTube TV, taking advantage of a free trial offer at Dish Network-owned Sling TV that included access to TNT.
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This isn’t the first time YouTube TV has suffered from a major outage that left streamers unable to watch live TV on their service. In January, a technical issue with a regional NBC Sports channel left fans of the Sacramento Kings basketball team unable to watch the first two quarters of a game against the Toronto Raptors on YouTube TV.
Last year, YouTube TV was one of several Google-owned products that went down due to a technical issue that plagued video streamers for hours. In 2020, a similar glitch left YouTube TV streamers unable to watch live or recorded television programs for about an hour.
