Ladbrokes and Coral working again after global IT outage causes chaos on Friday

Ladbrokes and Coral are able to accept bets from punters again after the two bookmakers were among a host of companies impacted by a global IT outage for the majority of Friday.

The software issue, which has caused chaos for airlines, train operators, banks and media organisations, also temporarily prevented Sky Sports Racing from broadcasting live content. However, the channel was back on air before Friday's fixture at Newbury started.

Customers seeking to log on to the Ladbrokes and Coral websites were met with a message from around 9am on Friday saying there is "temporary service disruption" and that users should continue to check back for updates. According to the website Downdetector, problems with the Ladbrokes website started being reported at around 6.30am on Friday.

In addition, Ladbrokes shops were also been impacted, according to the bookmaker's social media pages.

A statement on behalf of Ladbrokes and Coral received by the Racing Post at 6.40pm read: "Like many global businesses, some of our platforms, including Ladbrokes and Coral, are experiencing temporary IT issues. This is due to an update by a third party, CrowdStrike.

"We are working hard to resolve this, and some systems are back working, and some of our shops are not affected and are back working. We appreciate customers' patience and are sorry for any inconvenience."

The issues with Ladbrokes and Coral, which come under the parent company Entain, were flagged by the bookmakers on social media with mirror messages posted on X.

Shares in Entain were down 3.07 per cent to 644.20p at the end of trading on the London Stock Exchange.

Sky Sports Racing also posted a message on X on Friday morning, confirming they had been affected, but the issue was resolved in plenty of time before the card at Newbury started at 1.50pm.

The impact elsewhere

No problems have been reported by other bookmakers, while no courses in Britain or Ireland reported any issues with ticketing or on-course systems.

The IT outage, which has been causing issues in Europe, Australia, India, the US and New Zealand, has been impacting Windows PCs and software.

Sky News was unable to broadcast for a period of time on Friday morning, while air and rail passengers have been experiencing difficulties purchasing tickets, navigating through security and being checked in for their journeys.

In Britain, GP surgeries have reported trouble accessing patient medical records and booking appointments.

In a statement released on Friday, George Kurtz, the chief executive of cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike, said the IT outage had been caused by a software update provided by the firm and was not the result of a cyber attack.

Kurtz said: "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.

"We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.

"Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."

Speaking later to NBC, the US broadcaster, Kurtz said that it could be "some time" before systems were up and running for all customers.

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