As the number of ways to watch live sports without cable has ballooned, so too has the number of resources for helping you sift through all the options.
Sites like ESPN’s Where to Watch, MyBundle’s “Find My Bundle” tool, and Roku’s Sports section all aim to help make sense of the complicated, fragmented mess that sports streaming has become, with schedules of upcoming games and lists of ways to watch them.
I’m glad these resources exist, but they’re also a bit confusing in their own way, with informational blind spots that often result in an incomplete picture of your streaming options. Spend any time with these sports streaming guides, and you’ll quickly see where the limitations lie.
Here’s a list of useful tools to help you make sense of sports streaming, and what to be aware of as you use them:
ESPN Where to Watch
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ESPN’s new Where to Watch website offers a schedule for all major sporting events along with which the channels or streaming services you need to watch them. You can filter by league, search for specific teams, and—if you’re signed into an ESPN account—select favorites that appear at the top of the list.
It’s a great resource, but with some limitations: Instead of calling out specific live TV streaming services such as YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV for games that air on broadcast or cable channels, ESPN’s site merely provides a list of channels and trusts that you’ll figure out where to stream them. (More on that shortly.) Also, the site doesn’t make clear that services such as MLB TV and NFL Sunday Ticket only offer out-of-market games; it’d be nice if you could plug in a zip code to hide options that are blacked out in your area.
The Streamable Matchmaker
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The Streamable website has long offered a “Matchmaker” tool that lets you enter a list of desired TV channels and get a list of compatible live TV streaming services. This tool also works for sports, so you can type in your favorite teams and get a list of services that carry all the necessary channels. It’s a nice complement to ESPN’s What to Watch website, which doesn’t provide that information.
Unfortunately, the site seems to be struggling with NFL information at the moment. When I typed in the Bengals in Cincinnati, it failed to add CBS or any other channels with Bengals games to the list.
MyBundle’s NFL schedule
Jared Newman / Foundry
Similar to The Streamable, the MyBundle website offers a “Find My Bundle” tool where you can plug in channels, shows, and sports teams and get a list of compatible streaming services. But the site has also just launched an NFL Schedule page, where you can pick a team and see the streaming options for each game.
Notably, the site includes both “Local Feed” and “National” tabs, so you can see the options whether you’re in- or out-of-market. It’s a pretty basic tool right now, but hopefully the concept expands to more leagues and sports over time.
The Apple TV TV app
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Got an Apple TV? Open the “TV” app, scroll to the left sidebar menu, and click “Sports” to see a menu full of live and upcoming sporting events. Click on an event to see a list of streaming options or add it to your watchlist. You can also set a list of favorite teams, and they’ll appear in the TV app’s “Up Next” row whenever a game is on. Just scroll to the very bottom of the Sports menu, then click “Manage My Sports.”
Unfortunately, Apple’s TV app has some blind spots. It doesn’t link to NFL Sunday Ticket, and instead mistakenly lists the NFL app for out-of-market games. YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Sling TV don’t show up as streaming options either, so the best you can do is sign into individual network apps such as Fox Sports, NBC Sports, and ESPN with your pay TV account and watch the games that way.
Roku Sports
Jared Newman / Foundry
Much like Apple TV, Roku has a “Sports” section in the left sidebar of its home screen, leading to a list of live events, upcoming games, and “Zones” for major sports. Clicking on an individual event brings up a list of viewing options, and you can mark individual teams as favorites, which adds them to a “My Favorites” row.
But like the Apple TV, Roku’s information is incomplete. The ESPN app and ESPN+ are major omissions, and for out-the-market NFL games, Roku only links to the NFL app (which doesn’t actually carry those games) instead of Sunday Ticket on YouTube (which does). Roku’s Sports section also doesn’t link to YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV, the two most popular live TV Streaming Service.
Dishonorable mention: JustWatch Sport
Jared Newman / Foundry
JustWatch Sport tries to accomplish the same goal as ESPN’s Where to Watch site, but it’s worse in pretty much every measurable way. There’s no search function, you can’t follow individual teams, and the actual details on where to watch are woefully inadequate. Stranger still, the site makes extensive use of British terminology (“Fixtures,” “Match Day”) even for American sports leagues, and long-promised features such as a way to track favorite teams have yet to materialize.
JustWatch Sport launched roughly two years ago, and it seems the company promptly forgot that it existed. The main JustWatch site is still useful for tracking movies and TV shows, which is the only reason I’m mentioning the Sport section at all. If anyone at JustWatch is reading this, I implore you to either take this tool seriously or just get rid of it.
Don’t miss Jared’s stories on how to stream NFL RedZone and the best ways to get NFL Sunday Ticket.
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