Is ESPN down? Outages explained
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, or ESPN, is a cable sports channel owned by Hearst Communications and The Walt Disney Company.
Some viewers of the sports channel experienced problems with the station in August 2023, but the reason for it was beyond a simple technical issue.
Is ESPN down?
On August 31, 2023, ESPN went down for all Spectrum TV users due to a dispute between Spectrum and Disney.
Since The Walt Disney Company has a stake in ESPN, it was able to pull the plug on the channel as the disagreement continued.
The sports channel was airing the US Open and college football when the outage initially took place, per .
People started reporting outages on the ESPN live channel around 7.43pm, according to . Exactly half an hour later, there were 5,643 reported outages.
ABC, FX, and other Disney-owned channels were also impacted by the blackout and have "gone dark" on Spectrum.
Spectrum, owned by Charter Communications, boasts 14.7million subscribers and is the second-largest cable TV provider in the United States.
Disney officials said in an August 31 statement that they've been in ongoing negotiations with the company for some time and "have not yet agreed to a new market-based agreement.
"Disney Entertainment has successful deals in place with pay TV providers of all types and sizes across the country, and the rates and terms we are seeking in this renewal are driven by the marketplace.
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"We’re committed to reaching a mutually agreed upon resolution with Charter and we urge them to work with us to minimize the disruption to their customers."
On X, formerly Twitter, Spectrum also commented on the issue.
"The Walt Disney Company has removed their programming from Spectrum," the company wrote on its .
"Spectrum is on your side and fighting hard to resolve this situation and keep costs down while protecting and maximizing customer choice. We apologize for the inconvenience," the company wrote.
At this time, it is unknown when and if the dispute will conclude and ESPN programming will return to Spectrum users.
How can I check if ESPN is down?
There are a few websites that monitor outages on websites, apps, video games and other tech platforms.
Downdetector is one of those websites.
To check if ESPN is experiencing outages, viewers can simply visit the website, type "ESPN" into the search bar, and hit search.
Has ESPN been down before?
On January 10, 2022, there were reports of ESPN's streaming service and website being down.
A total of 41 percent of reports were from users who had trouble with ESPN's streaming service, per Downdetector.
32 percent of users had issues with their website itself, and 27 percent had issues with the ESPN app.
The peak of the outages occurred around 5.28pm, the site reported.
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Some ESPN users took to X to express their frustration.
"Anyone know why when I try to watch game on epsn it says 'an unexpected error has occurred' I will pay u if u fix this for me," one user wrote.