It’s been a punishing 2022 for fuboTV Inc., the streaming TV service provider that has put live sports programming as a key reason for subscribers to pony up a subscription.
On December 20, 2021, the company’s stock, traded on the NYSE, reached $17.70 per share. By mid-July, FUBO had fallen to just above $2.50 per share.
Now, fuboTV stock is at a fresh all-time low, as investors reacted to news from the company that it has been the victim of a cyberattack.
On Wednesday (12/14), “many” fuboTV customers “experienced issues” accessing their accounts.
It just happened to be the day of the 2022 FIFA World Cup semi-final match between winner France and Morocco, which had advanced further than any country from Africa in the history of the soccer tournament.
What was the problem? “The incident was not related to any bandwidth constraints on Fubo’s part. We were instead the target of a criminal cyber attack,” the company said in a statement released at 9am Eastern Thursday.
Investors responded by selling shares of FUBO, which was down 5.6% to $2.1992 as of 11:45am Eastern. On a punishing day across Wall Street, FUBO ended Thursday at just $2.1550.
“FuboTV takes this matter very seriously,” the company said in its statement. “Once we detected the attack, we immediately took steps to contain the incident and worked to restore service to all of our users as quickly as possible.”
How quick was that? “Service was fully restored by last evening,” FuboTV admitted, suggesting that a segment of its subscribers could not watch the France-Morocco match.
The incident has been reported to law enforcement, while FuboTV has engaged incident response firm Mandiant to assist with FuboTV’s continuing investigation and response. “Our primary focus currently is on ensuring that the incident is fully contained and that there is no threat of further disruption for any of our customers,” FuboTV said. “Our investigation is at an early stage, but we are committed to transparency regarding this incident. We will provide an update at an appropriate time when we have more information to share.”
The statement concluded, “Although no company can ever be immune from the risk of cyber attacks, we assure you that we are working diligently with our outside cybersecurity experts to take all appropriate steps to remediate this incident and to prevent any similar incident from recurring in the future.”
The cyberattack couldn’t have come at a more fragile period in FuboTV’s history.
On December 6, financial blog Simply Wall Street issued a report that stated, “As every investor would know, you don’t hit a homerun every time you swing. But serious investors should think long and hard about avoiding extreme losses. So we hope that those who held fuboTV Inc. (NYSE:FUBO) during the last year don’t lose the lesson, in addition to the 84% hit to the value of their shares. To make matters worse, the returns over three years have also been really disappointing (the share price is 72% lower than three years ago). The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 24% in the last three months.”
The assessment from Simply Wall Street came following the release of preliminary Q3 2022 results from fuboTV in mid-October, at which time it suddenly shuttered all operations of Fubo Sportsbook, as its Fubo Gaming subsidiary began its shutdown. “While multiple parties expressed interest in the business, none of these opportunities would have allowed Fubo to lower its funding requirements and generate sufficient returns to shareholders,” the company said.
On a positive note, FuboTV and the regional sports network home to the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets, Altitude Sports, in October secured a multi-year carriage agreement that will expand TV coverage of both teams.
