The Fox Sports division of US network Fox has blamed a “rare electronics failure” after its broadcast of Tuesday’s dramatic opening game of Major League Baseball’s World Series went off air.
Fox said the near 20 minute outage occurred when a broadcast truck lost power. The situation caused a seven-minute delay on the field as MLB officials waited for it to be rectified in order to deliver the broadcast to replay officials in New York.
Play between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets resumed after the teams agreed to continue without video replay, which allows plays to be reviewed, during the Fox outage.
Fox moved to the live international feed provided by the MLB Network pay-television service, although that also went down before shortly returning to television screens.
Fox Sports said in a statement: “Before the start of the bottom of the fourth inning… a rare electronics failure caused both the primary and backup generators inside the Fox Sports production compound to lose power.
“The issue was immediately addressed, although it resulted in the audience missing one at-bat during the time needed to switch to (the) international feed, powered by a different generator on site.”
Game One of the seven-match World Series lasted a record five hours and nine minutes. It eventually saw the Royals come from behind to register a 5-4 win.