What Happened with FoxBet & PokerStars’ Outage: Recap of Events

Intial FoxBet & PokerStars Outage

Users of the online poker card room PokerStars and online sportsbook Fox Bet experienced an internet outage that began midday on Friday, Feb. 4, and lasted through the weekend and beyond. The outage affected PokerStars users in the states of Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and Fox Bet users in those three states, plus Colorado. Both online gambling entities are owned by Flutter Entertainment, the world’s largest online gambling company.

At just after 5:00p.m. ET on Friday, PokerStarsUSA took to Twitter to address the issues that players were evidently having with accessing their bets on their site. “Due to unscheduled maintenance, all MTT’s have been canceled until Monday at 10am EST. Our apologies for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Feb. 6, Fox Bet Care, the customer service department of Fox Bet Sportsbook tweeted: “Our sites are currently down due to an unscheduled maintenance issue and our tech team is working hard to get all backup and running ASAP. Customers across all verticals (FOX Bet Sportsbook, PokerStars & Stars Casino) can still manage their accounts. We do not anticipate any impacts to customer account balances – this is not a data breach. We thank customers for their patience and apologize for this inconvenience.”

Both of these Tweets were met with questions about the security and safety of their money in their account as well as criticism for the vague explanation of the issues at hand.

One user on Twitter wrote in response to PokerStarUSA’s initial tweet, “IMO (in my opinion) you guys have to be a bit more transparent than this. Will cash games be available? Will withdrawals/deposits be available? Why did this happen? I’m not gonna trash or talk down but I think the players deserve an explanation further than this.”

While there is no good time for said “unscheduled maintenance” to happen on such a popular website, this timing certainly wasn’t ideal. All of the states affected by the internet outages also happen to be states that are typically met with wicked winters; this week they happen to be approaching sub-freezing temperatures. So the criticism was likely heightened due to the influx of cold people stuck inside on their technology.

Sites Go Back Up

By Monday, Feb. 8 at around 5:00 p.m. ET, Fox Bet Care followed up with the following via Twitter: “We are back up and running with FOX Bet Sportsbook, PokerStars and Stars Casino in all states. Functionality of our Casino offering via website will be forthcoming. We’ve started the process to settle bets and review outstanding free bets, as well as promotions. We will be in touch directly with customers soon. We apologize again for the inconvenience.”

Per PokerStarsUSA’s Twitter on Feb.9, “as of noon today, when MTT’s came back online in NJ, all of our games in all three states are back up and running normally.”

With Super Bowl Sunday this week and Sunday being the most popular day of the week for PokerStars users to bet already, the timing seems to have worked out to punch lots of tickets for the big game. Hopefully, they can make up for the disappointments of this last week.

By www.lineups.com