Tabcorp restores services, after third party data centre fire

Australian gambling entertainment company faced major outage during the weekend.

Australia’s Tabcorp has provided an update on the major outage which impacted its TAB, Keno and Gaming Services operations and systems from around 11:30am AEDT on Saturday 7 November 2020. According to the gaming company, services have now largely been restored with an immediate focus on ensuring the systems return to optimal service levels in coming days.

Tabcorp has commenced a comprehensive and urgent review into this incident, which will be overseen by the Board. Based on a preliminary assessment, a smoke and likely fire incident at a third-party managed data centre in Sydney resulted in extensive damage to Tabcorp’s servers and associated infrastructure.

This led to technical and systems outages, as well as the closure of TAB retail venues. At this stage, there is no evidence of any potential cyber security issues or customer data breaches. Lost wagering turnover over the weekend is estimated to have impacted Tabcorp EBITDA by less than A$10 million. Initially Tabcorp apologised for a “major technical issue that has resulted in outages in its TAB, Keno and Gaming Services operations”.

AT the time, the issue was currently understood to have been caused by a major power disruption at one of the external data centres which houses Tabcorp’s servers.

Tabcorp’s technology teams and its technology partners continued to deploy all resources on the restoration of full service.

“The outage was unacceptable. Tabcorp remains deeply sorry for this and acknowledges the significant disruption caused to our customers, the racing industry and venue partners,” said Tabcorp Managing Director and CEO, David Attenborough. “Our teams and technology partners are continuing to deploy all available resources into restoring the full Tabcorp gambling entertainment experience for our customers and partners.”

According to Australian media the power outage at a third-party data centre, meant Tabcorp was unable to take bets for more than 27 hours on the weekend costing more than A$100 million in turnover.

Tabcorp’s CIO Françoise Russo joined the company in May 2020. Prior to joining Tabcorp, Russo was global CIO at Toll Group, where she led a multi-year business transformation underpinned by a program of global technology modernisation.

She has also worked overseas with organisations such as Procter & Gamble, Diageo and British American Tobacco, where she was the regional CIO for Europe, Middle East and Africa.