Broadcasters Consider Suing Uefa After Semi-final Blackout

The European football championships provoked bitter recriminations and angry editorials across the continent yesterday. But, for once, the cause was not a questionable offside decision but the loss of television pictures at a crucial juncture of Germany's semi-final victory over Turkey.

Caused by a series of power cuts at Uefa's international broadcast center in Vienna and the failure of a back-up generator amid electrical storms, the sudden loss of pictures and sound provoked panicked scenes among European broadcasters with 18 minutes of the game to go.

The director of sport at German broadcaster ZDF said yesterday it was "the most annoying balls-up imaginable" on a night when up to 32.7 million people were watching. The broadcaster was forced to resort to TV reporter Bela Rethy giving a blow-by-blow account of events in a telephone link when the multiple disruptions occurred. Eventually producers switched to an alternative feed from a Swiss broadcaster, but the winning goal was heard before it was seen.

Because the match was taking place in Basle, the co-hosts boasted the only broadcaster with an alternative means of transmitting the pictures. Yet even when pictures were restored, viewers in Germany, the UK and elsewhere were seeing the action several seconds after it had been described by commentators.

Some European broadcasters were yesterday considering legal action against Uefa, which provides the central feeds of all matches to 140 broadcasting rights holders around the world.

There were also public order concerns in Turkey and Germany, where 500,000 people were watching the match on big screens in Berlin, but there were no major incidents reported. When a big screen erected in Manchester city center failed halfway through the Uefa cup final last month, Rangers fans rioted.

In the UK, almost 9 million viewers were watching the BBC when the pictures cut out and producers yesterday described the scenes in the pitch-black control room in Vienna as a German goal went in while they were off air.

"Everything went black. We also lost all the phones, the consoles, everything. We couldn't talk to John Motson, so everyone immediately got onto mobile phones," said executive producer Phil Bigwood, who was forced to switch to an audio feed from Radio 5 Live. "All the technical people rushed into the main control room. I have never, ever known anything like it."

Euro 2008 marks the first time that Uefa has brought its broadcast operation in-house for a major championship. By doing so it hoped to be able to improve quality and better integrate the television pictures with its own website. Uefa promised to switch to petrol generators not connected to the national grid for last night's semi-final and Sunday's final.