The streaming multichannel video provider FuboTV says it was the victim of a “criminal cyber attack” Wednesday, an attack which was responsible for its service going down during a critical FIFA World Cup match between France and Morocco.
In a statement Thursday morning, FuboTV said that “the incident was not related to any bandwidth constraints on Fubo’s part,” and that it had contacted law enforcement about the attack.
“FuboTV takes this matter very seriously. Once we detected the attack, we immediately took steps to contain the incident and worked to restore service to all of our users as quickly as possible,” the statement said. “Service was fully restored by last evening. We deeply regret the disruption caused by this incident in the meantime.”
It continued: “We have reported the incident to law enforcement and have engaged Mandiant, an industry-leading incident response firm, to assist with our continuing investigation and response. Our primary focus currently is on ensuring that the incident is fully contained and that there is no threat of further disruption for any of our customers.”
FuboTV, a so-called virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) offers traditional broadcast and cable channels through streaming, similar to YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV. Fubo is a smaller player than those market leaders (it has about 1 million subscribers), but has made live sports a focal point of its platform, integrating sports betting and odds information directly into its offering, and overlaying stats on top of live sports coverage.
An attack during a key World Cup match is in many ways a worst-case scenario for the company.