Tabcorp suffered outages to customer-facing services over the weekend after a “fire incident” caused “extensive damage” to servers it hosted at a third-party data centre.

The problems started at about 11.30am Saturday and continued through the weekend, with race meetings delayed or postponed as a result.

In a statement, Tabcorp apologised for the “major technical issue” that forced its TAB, Keno and gaming services operations offline. It initially attributed the outages to a “major power disruption” but has since said the cause was a fire at the unnamed facility.

“Based on a preliminary assessment, a smoke and likely fire incident at a third-party managed data centre resulted in extensive damage to Tabcorp’s servers and associated infrastructure,” it said on Sunday night.

“This led to technical and systems outages, as well as the closure of TAB retail venues.“Tabcorp’s technology teams and its technology partners are continuing to deploy all resources on the restoration of full service.”

Tabcorp said it was able to resurrect Keno retail services on Saturday while TAB and Keno digital services had “been largely restored from around 3pm AEDT” Sunday.

Tabcorp CEO and managing director David Attenborough apologised “to our customers, the racing industry, venues and other partners for the issues”.

“We appreciate the importance of Saturday’s race meetings, especially at Flemington and Rosehill Gardens, and are disappointed that we have been unable to give customers the experience the day deserves,” Attenborough said.