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ESPN's fantasy football app sacked on season's first Sunday

App goes dark for millions of fantasy managers as the season is about to kick off.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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ESPN's fantasy football app threw fans for a loop Sunday when it crashed, leaving millions of fantasy managers in the dark.

The outage occurred around 10 a.m. PT as the nine games were about to kick off on the first day of the 2016 season. ESPN Fantasy Sports said in a pair of tweets that it was aware of the problem and was working to correct the situation.

Fantasy sports play has grown dramatically in recent years, with more than 57 million people in the US and Canada participating in 2015, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Some of those fans took to Twitter to voice their displeasure, including one US senator.

An ESPN representative said Sunday afternoon that it had resolved the issue and that the issue did not affect the makeup of teams or leagues.

"We identified a backend data access issue and resolved as quickly as possible. The issue did not impact data for teams, leagues or rosters."

With luck, the problem will not crop up again as the NFL wraps up week one of the season on Monday night with games between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Washington Redskins and between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers.

Update, 4:45 p.m. PT September 11 and 9:15 a.m. PT September 12 with ESPN comment and with Monday's lineup. Editor's note: This story originally published on September 11.