Bally Sports Detroit app goes dark for many during portion of Tigers game

With the Tigers playing arguably their most-anticipated game in nearly a decade, many fans were in the dark for much of the first four innings Tuesday night.

As the Tigers were playing the Kansas City Royals while trailing the Minnesota Twins by 1.5 games for the final wild-card spot in the American League, the Bally Sports Plus app went down for many customers in the Michigan market, and in other markets across the country.

A Bally Sports Detroit exec said around 8 p.m. Tuesday, about 20 minutes following first pitch, that the operations department was aware of the situation and was working to fix it. Service was restored about an hour after the start of the Tigers-Royals game, Bally Sports told its customers on social media.

“Bally Sports is currently experiencing a streaming interruption across multiple platforms” read a message from Bally Sports’ X (formerly Twitter) account around 8:17 Thursday. “We know every moment matters. The Bally Sports operations team is working quickly to identify and resolve the issue.”

When some fans went to load the TV stream of the game, they were met with an error message: “We’ve encountered a problem leading your video. Please retry or contact customer care for help.”

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Around 8:40 Tuesday, Bally Sports said on X service had been restored “across all regions.” Bally Sports said if customers are continuing to experience issues, they can contact the support staff at help.ballysports.com.

Many Tigers fans began subscribing to the Bally Sports Plus app (for more than $20 a month) earlier this season when Diamond Sports, the parent company of the Bally Sports stable of regional-sports networks, and Comcast, the parent company of Xfinity, hit an impasse in negotiations, and the RSNs were removed from Xfinity’s offerings on May 1.

Diamond Sports and Xfinity reached an agreement, and the Bally Sports RSNs returned to the cable giant’s lineup Aug. 1.

Counting Tuesday night’s game in Kansas City, the Tigers have 11 games left in the regular season as they try to make the postseason for the first time since 2016. The Twins were playing the AL Central-leading Cleveland Guardians.

The Tigers rallied to beat the Royals, 7-6, on Monday, to pull within 1.5 games of the Twins, who had an early lead on the Guardians but ended up losing, 4-3.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

@tonypaul1984