A staple of ESPN’s presentation was missing for multiple hours early Monday morning, as the network’s BottomLine ticker experienced an outage. The ticker initially went down just before 11:30 p.m. ET on Sunday during an NBA matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves, continuing through several overnight SportsCenter episodes and only returning shortly before 2:49 a.m. ET on Monday.
As noted by Timothy Burke, the outage not only impacted ESPN but also affected its sister stations, including ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, and the SEC Network. ESPNU was reported to be the first channel to lose its ticker, with the BottomLine disappearing after 9 p.m. ET on Sunday. Meanwhile, ESPNews lost its ticker just before 12:20 a.m. ET on Monday, but all stations had their BottomLine features restored by 3 a.m. ET.
ATTENTION: The Bottom Line is broken. REPEAT: The Bottom Line is broken.
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog.lol) February 24, 2025 at 12:36 AM
According to the BottomLine’s Wikipedia page (yes, it has one), the BottomLine first debuted on ESPN2 in 1995 and has since evolved through various versions for different channels and shows. While the necessity of the BottomLine could be debated in today’s internet and smartphone era, its long-standing presence in ESPN’s programming makes the screen feel ‘naked’ without it. Current indications suggest that the outage was simply a technical glitch and not a sign of any impending changes to the BottomLine feature on ESPN screens.
