- When it comes to live TV, sports is undoubtedly
the most valuable thing on TV at the moment.
- Hi, I'm Andrew Luck and I have NFL Sunday ticket.
- So it's been very, very tough for traditional TV providers
to kind of let go of live sports
the same way that they've let go of other types of live TV.
So you've got a lot of other apps
if you wanna watch say HGTV shows or Discovery
or whatever you might think of.
There's probably a streaming service out there
where you can get the content that you're getting on live TV
on some other streaming option,
but sports, yeah, a little bit tougher
and much more complicated.
So today for Cord Cutting 101,
we're going to dive into streaming sports.
Whether you can do it, where you can do it,
how possible it is for certain sports, that sort of thing.
So we're not going to dive
into every last little bit of minutia,
but I am gonna give you a broad overview
of what it means to stream with live sports.
So let's dive in.
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so we can hash things out kind of in person, right?
But for today, let's talk about live sports.
Basically, there are two things you need to know about.
First is out of-market-streaming services
and then the second is the cable replacement services
and what channels they carry.
So first, let's start
with the out-of-market streaming services.
When I talk about that,
what I'm talking about is a service like say MLB.TV.
I'm familiar with this one because I'm a huge baseball fan
and so I actually use this one.
Now, there are similar services for NBA
with NBA League Pass, there's NHL.TV.
Football's a little bit different
and we'll get there in just a moment,
but let's stick with these other ones for now.
If you want to stream say MLB games,
then you can sign up for MLB.TV for an annual rate,
whether you want to watch just one team
or maybe the entire league,
but this service is going to let you watch every game
that is outside your market.
Now, for somebody like me, this works out great
because I live in the Salt Lake City area,
but I'm a huge fan of the Mariners
'cause that's where I grew up.
So really it's not much of a problem,
especially because the only team
that is technically in my TV market is the Denver Rockies,
they're National League,
the Mariners are American League, who cares?
They play every once in a while,
but I just find another way to watch.
So if I were a Mariners fan living in Seattle,
this would be tougher because those games
would all be blacked out.
The Mariners have a TV deal with ROOT SPORTS Northwest
which televise is all of their games
and it'll be similar across the country.
The Yankees have the YES Network and so on and so on.
And it's going to work in a very similar way
across other sports as well.
So like I mentioned, NBA league Pass or NHL.TV,
these are out-of-market streaming services
and so they a great option
if you're somebody who is in my boat
or hey, maybe you do live in your team's area
and you just wanna be able to keep track
of the rest of the league easily.
Yeah, it's a good option for that.
So those are good options for MLB, NBA and NHL games,
but what about soccer for instance?
When it comes to soccer, especially American soccer,
but even some other stuff, I think Budesliga is on there,
then ESPN+ really is a great option for you.
They're gonna have a bunch of games on that service.
The NFL is the trickiest one.
NFL is, well, they're very jealous of the TV rights
that they give out
and so my hope for a long time has been NFL TV
kind of similar to these other ones, nothing doing yet.
In fact, the NFL just inked an agreement
with a bunch of TV providers,
so now Disney has the rights to Monday Night Football
for the next 10 years.
Amazon bought the rights for Thursday Night Football,
so Amazon Prime Video
is gonna be carrying Thursday Night Football for awhile,
no word yet on NFL Sunday ticket.
So where are those Sunday games gonna live?
But interestingly, Apple TV+ is making a bid.
We'll see where that goes,
but as of this filming nothing official yet.
We'll see where the Sunday games and end up.
But the point is the NFL is, yeah, it's complicated,
it's all over the place.
It is the most valuable property
as far as per hour basis, how much they can make on ads.
The NFL games are very, very popular
and playoffs and Super Bowl.
Forget about it, it's huge, obviously.
So yeah, we may have to wait a little while longer
for the NFL to come up with a streaming service like that.
But hey, fingers crossed, in another decade we'll have one.
Although I should mention that with all of these TV deals
for the next decade or so,
the NFL is allowing more streaming options.
So whether it's ABC or ESPN
or Prime Video obviously, whatever,
there are going to be more options
for these games to be streamed,
so you won't necessarily have to have
a traditional TV provider to get them.
So that's potential good news at least.
But if you are an all sports, all day kind of person
and you want a bunch of sports channels,
you're probably going to end up needing to get a cable
or satellite replacement streaming service,
a live TV streamer.
Something like Hulu Live, YouTube TV, fuboTV, Sling,
that sort of thing.
So with that in mind,
I went through six major streaming TV providers
to see which channels they actually provide.
This is not an exhaustive list
of all the sports channels out there.
Obviously there are very niche things,
like you've got Pac-12 Networks
and in fact, you've got Pac-12 Networks
for different regions within the PAC-12.
I did not track those,
but I did try to track the big ones.
So we're talking about ESPN, Fox Sports,
we're talking NBC Sports Networks, CBS Sports Network
and then a few of those leagues specific ones,
NBA TV, NFL Network, MLB Network, that sort of thing.
And I'll go ahead and put that up for you now in a chart,
so we can kind of see what we're looking at.
Now, the most surprising thing for me
was frankly, how weak Hulu Live was when it comes to sports,
especially because as recently as a year or two ago,
they were making a big marketing push
saying, Hulu Live has sports and they do.
They have a few of those bigger networks,
obviously ESPN and Fox Sports,
but they are lacking some of those leagues specific networks
that you're gonna find elsewhere.
Vidgo is the little streaming service that could
and I haven't actually highlighted it on this channel yet.
I will, so subscribe, like and subscribe
if you wanna see that one.
But I was actually surprised,
I was expecting it to be light on sports networks and it is,
but they do have NFL Redzone along with the NFL Network,
which I thought was pretty surprising,
especially at Vidgo price point.
When we look at Fubo, Sling and AT&T TV,
those all have quite a lot of sports networks
available on them.
However, they do get kind of complicated.
There are ad-ons, there are different tiers
and there are a bunch of different ways
that you could mix and match
to get the sports networks you wanted,
but oftentimes you'll have to pay
a little bit extra to get them.
Yeah, it's all kind of confusing.
But the best one on the list has to be YouTube TV
just in terms of how many sports networks it has
and how simple it is.
In the case of YouTube TV,
most everything is going to be included
in their base package at 65 bucks a month,
but when it comes to NFL Redzone,
if you are a big fan of that
and you want that in your arsenal,
then you're gonna have to get the sports add-on
which is 11 bucks a month.
Plus they don't have the NHL Network on YouTube TV,
so it's not like it's perfect,
but I am going to rank it at the top
of this list of providers, like I said,
just because it has so many of them
in such a simple layout.
So there you go.
That's what you need to know.
If you are going to replace your cable or satellite service,
then I would probably point you toward YouTube TV,
unless you're looking for the NHL Network
or unless you only want NFL Redzone
in which case go to Vidgo.
But yeah, YouTube TV is a pretty clear winner there
and on the other side of things,
if you are outside the market of your favorite teams,
then you're in luck because you can just use
those other streaming services,
the out-of-market streaming services
to get the games that you want.
Anyway, if you have any other questions,
hit the comments below.
Today, we really only covered a broad view
of what it looks like to stream sports,
but if you have any specific questions, hit the comments.
I'll be in there in the comments for the next few days
and certainly I'm sure
there are other people out there as well who can reply
and answer questions out there.
So love to hear from you in the comments.
Don't forget to like and subscribe
if this video is helpful
and I will see you on the Friday live stream
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See you there.