Fans Freak at ESPN Fantasy Football Outage

Network apologizes for glitch during highly trafficked Week 1 game
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 8, 2014 11:16 AM CDT
Fans Freak at ESPN Fantasy Football Outage
Denver Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders (10) can't make the catch as Indianapolis Colts cornerback Greg Toler (28) defends during an NFL football game on Sept. 7, 2014, in Denver.    (AP Photo/Joe Mahoney)

Last night's game between the Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts was anything but an ESPN fantasy: Rather, it turned into a social media nightmare after the network's fantasy football website and app went down—somewhat inconveniently during what USA Today Sports says was the "most trafficked fantasy day of the year." As social media users are wont to do, they went bonkers, alternately railing against the network and poking fun at inconsolable fans; Mashable has some good examples of the freakout. Adding insult to injury, an error message blamed the outage on "routine maintenance," though an ESPN rep tweeted that that was simply a "default message appearing due to [a] tech issue." The servers were back up in about 20 minutes, intergalactic crisis averted. (More ESPN stories.)

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