TAB and Sportsbet caught up in Microsoft outage

The TAB and Sportsbet have been impacted by a widespread Microsoft outage that is disrupting numerous major enterprises globally.

At approximately 3pm on Friday, TAB’s betting services, both online and in physical locations, came to a complete halt.

Fellow major betting site Sportsbet faced similar challenges with its online services.

“We’re facing a total blackout,” reported a TAB insider. “This has impacted both our online and retail operations, putting us in the same predicament as many other companies.”

Sky Racing, a sister company to TAB, is also grappling with difficulties, with on-air presenters acknowledging they are operating under “trying circumstances.”

The outage has led to a halt in the finalisation of TAB tote prices, causing issues with payouts for already placed bets and affecting corporate bookmakers with tote-related products.

Collectively, Tabcorp and Sportsbet control over 70 percent of the wagering market share.

In response to the outage, Sportsbet released a statement: “We’re currently experiencing technical difficulties due to a global Windows Outage. Some services and betting are unavailable as a result. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible.”

The root cause of the issue is a “blue screen error” stemming from a Crowdstrike outage, resulting in servers and devices being stuck in “boot loops.”

This IT disruption is also affecting other countries, with reports of outages from New Zealand, Japan, and India.