‘The Lion King’ Interrupts Football Semi-Final and Outrages Fans

Everybody loves Disney’s 1994 animated movie The Lion King — but maybe not in the middle of the FA Cup semi-finals! Football fans across the pond were outraged during their semi-finals after Simba and Mufasa made an unwelcome cameo.

According to the Daily Star, football fans were enjoying a semi-final that had only just gotten interesting with a goal when ITV, which was showing the game live, suddenly switched to playing The Lion King (the 1994 Elton John version, not the live-action Donald Glover version). The two teams playing were Chelsea and Crystal Palace.

Strong work as ever from ITV, cutting from live coverage of the FA Cup semi final to The Lion King. pic.twitter.com/jKVSiGdhqq

— David (@davidclewis) April 17, 2022

Instead of football, fans watched about 16 seconds of a scene from The Lion King in which Simba and Mufasa discuss antelope. You can see the glitch in the Tweet shown above!

Once the glitch was fixed and live coverage of the football game began again, some fans yelled “Hakuna Matata” in reference to the movie.

Interrupting any sports fan during an important game always results in upsetting the fan, but the interruption was particularly frustrating for viewers because a climactic moment in an otherwise boring game had just happened. Football player Ruben Loftus-Cheek had just scored a goal for Chelsea when the strange glitch occurred.

Football fans were understandably annoyed and shared their grievances on social media, with one fan saying joking that “Disney lawyers would “charge ITV $6 trillion for showing Lion King without permission during the football” and another fan joking that ITV was “so sickened by Chelsea scoring they’ve switched it to The Lion King.”

ITV then went on to accidentally show yet another clip from The Lion King! At least neither scene involved Hakuna Matata; a song about relaxing would no doubt have been particularly frustrating for fans who wanted to go back to watching their game!