Cable cutting is quickly becoming the norm in countries with vast streaming options, despite how bumpy the landscape has been in the early 2020s. One of streaming’s drawbacks used to be the lack of sports coverage, but problems still exist now that rights have been acquired.
Hulu is the perfect example of this, considering how many baseball fans missed out on crucial MLB playoff moments during the platform’s live coverage on Oct. 17. Around 83,000 outages were recorded during multiple sporting events on Thursday, according to Downdetector.
Fans were quick to take to social media with incensed reactions to missing out on events they spent lots of money to be able to access, “I pay $100s of dollars and you go down during playoff baseball?”
The spotty coverage came at the worst time for those donning Dodgers and Mets caps, as the two teams met in New York for a National League Championship game.
LA Times reported that the outages started around the time the teams were tied 1-1 going into the second inning. Some Hulu viewers missed the second through fourth innings, and logging-in issues continued through 7 pm.
It’s no wonder Hulu customers were furious, given streaming services with add-ons for sports come out to around the same price as cable, which many originally ditched because of inflated prices.
Almost all streaming services have raised their prices steadily in the last few years, with the likes of Disney Plus, Netflix, and Max frequently notifying users of price increases.
Bloated budgets, A-lister payouts, and the quickly deteriorating business plan of making endless movie-quality limited series are all to blame — general inflation, depending on the customer’s location, is also inferred as a cause.
Hulu Support on X eventually responded to angry tweets, writing, “We are seeing service improving as we actively work to resolve a technical issue impacting live playback and log-in errors on Hulu. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
An hour later, the account reported the issue had been fixed… kind of. “The technical issue that impacted live playback and log-in errors on Hulu has been mitigated. Thank you for your patience and we apologize again for the inconvenience.”
Lots of people made jabs about expecting credits on their next bill or refunds for their subscription, which is unlikely to happen.
MLB on Hulu
When it’s working, you can watch MLB with a Hulu Plus Live TV subscription. The plan allows you to access live broadcasts, the MLB Network in real-time, and record games to watch later.
Coverage depends on regional availability, but Hulu says you just need a subscription, a device that supports live TV, a home network, live TV network coverage, and “peanuts and hot dogs.”
The details page we got the above information from failed to list the most important thing: a working Hulu.
If you don’t want to shell out for the expensive Plus Live TV plan, your basic Hulu subscription will grant access to NHL games and next-day WWE streams if that’s more your jam.