The PSG-Juventus match for the Champions League could not be seen live on MyCanal. The platform was down throughout the meeting. The failure is unexplained to date, but the hypothesis of a computer attack has emerged.
A black screen, a page that turns in a vacuum without loading the video then an error message. This, in summary, is the audiovisual experience experienced by MyCanal viewers who wanted to watch the shock encounter between Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus Turin live on the evening of September 6, 2022.
For football fans, it’s a wasted evening — and many have complained about it on social media. But for Canal, it is an incident that looks like an industrial disaster, as this sport is a strategic asset for its audiences. Especially when it comes to PSG, the Champions League and the club’s first game in this tournament this year.
It was certainly the football match not to be missed at the start of the year for the encrypted channel. It was not until after the encounter — reports poured in that it was impossible to see anything for the 90 minutes — that the signal was restored. But the damage was done. The question now arises: what caused such a technical failure?
The day after the incident, on September 7, Canal+ has not yet communicated on this failure. On Twitter, the official account of the encrypted channel just relayed yesterday messages from another account, dedicated to subscriptions and MyCanal. They apologized for this bug and mentioned a ” high attendance ” and one ” large number of simultaneous connections “.
Canal+ is not unaware of the strong enthusiasm for PSG, football and the Champions League on the part of the public and the fact that these meetings are among the most watched. According to the hearings of the day beforethere were 1.73 million viewers in front of PSG-Juventus on Canal + – but we do not know how many of them found themselves in front of a black screen.
In addition, the channel has experience: it has been broadcasting football matches and major competitions for years. It also uses reputable partners in the field of hosting and distribution of content – such as Amazon Web Services, and has been for several years. AWS even published a case study mentioning Canal.
A computer attack against Canal+?
Another track, however, is considered: that of the computer attack. This is reported by the newspaper L’Équipe in a paper published on September 6 after the match.
The influx of connections mentioned by the Canal+ account on Twitter may suggest a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS), since it aims to saturate the target, so that it can no longer satisfy requests legitimate. But this has not been confirmed by the channel. Contacted on the hypothesis of a cyberattack by Numerama, Canal + has not yet sent its comments.
PSG’s next match in the Champions League is scheduled for September 14 against Israeli club Maccabi Haifa. In a week, then.
The channel will be expected at the turn, because viewers have criticized this failure with regard to the price of the subscription they pay each month. And it’s out of the question review the goal excerpts on Twitter. For Canal+, this is all the more important to avoid pushing its customers to fall back on illegal sites out of frustration. Because pirate streaming still exists.