On Thursday evening, Hulu Live experienced a significant outage, frustrating users across the United States who were trying to stream several high-profile sports events, including MLB playoff games, NFL matchups, college football, and soccer. The outage, which occurred during a particularly busy night for sports fans, quickly sparked a wave of complaints on social media, with many subscribers expressing their anger at being cut off in the middle of crucial games.
Several users took to platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to voice their frustration. One irate subscriber tweeted, “2 playoff baseball games, NFL, college football, and @hulu just stops working. If this isn’t fixed in 2 minutes I’m switching to YouTube TV. This is a joke and waste of money.”
The outage was widely reported by Down Detector, a website that monitors service interruptions. According to its data, approximately 75% of users were unable to stream video, while 25% reported issues with logging into the service. The outage hit users particularly hard as they were in the middle of watching crucial moments in various sporting events, including Game 4 of the National League Championship Series (NLCS), which was tied 1-1 when the service cut out.
One particularly frustrated fan, who was watching the Islanders game, tweeted, “AAArgh. That’s it. I am done with Hulu Live TV. Once again, we were bounced out of Hulu and can’t log back in. And we have the Disney bundle. Can’t log into ESPN+ either. So no Islanders game.”
Other users shared similar complaints, with one person even jokingly threatening legal action: “Dear @hulu, Welcome to my class action lawsuit. I pay $100s of dollars and you go down during playoff baseball? I want $1,000,000 in punitive damages.”
This isn’t the first time Hulu Live has encountered such an issue. Some users mentioned that this was the second time they experienced an outage in the same week, leading to increased dissatisfaction with the service. One user even referenced a previous outage that coincidentally aligned with a win for the Mets, humorously suggesting that perhaps the outage might bring good luck again.
In response to the growing number of complaints, Hulu’s support team quickly acknowledged the problem on social media. They apologized for the inconvenience and reassured users that they were working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Hulu also suggested a temporary workaround, providing a link to their TV Everywhere feature, which allows users to access certain channels directly on network websites and apps. The support team tweeted, “Apologies for any inconvenience! Our team is aware of this behavior and we’re working to get you back to your favorite content as soon as we can. In the meantime, try using: https://hulu.tv/TVEverywhere as a possible workaround!”
While Hulu worked to resolve the outage, many users were left frustrated, questioning the reliability of the service during such high-stakes live events. The outage has reignited conversations about the competition in the live streaming space, with some users threatening to switch to other services like YouTube TV.
As sports fans increasingly turn to streaming services to watch live events, maintaining uninterrupted service has become crucial. For Hulu, Thursday night’s outage serves as a reminder of the importance of stability, especially during peak viewing times, when even the smallest disruption can lead to widespread dissatisfaction. The platform’s swift response may have helped alleviate some frustration, but the damage to its reputation among sports fans may take longer to repair.