Cord Cutting is the new pink. Well it sure has become damn popular. Money is tight. Cable costs a fortune.
But you still want to watch TV. Luckily after decades of monopoly by the big sateillite and cable firms the times are changing and consumers have a few options. Nothing is as easy to keeping the old cable on but with a bit of elbow grease there are alternatives.
Services like Netflix and Hulu have been a breakthrough in the history of entertainment. But one of the biggest challenges for the consumer willing to cut cable is sports.
It is difficult to find a worthy substitute for cable for live sports or even replays. Free alternatives are pretty tough to come by but at least there are a growing number of subscriptions in the market.
Day by day while cable TV subscriptions are cancelled, sports fans decide to stick with them making the main reason watching sports.
Without a good centralized way to view sports online, sport fans chose to sit in front of their cable TVs paying huge bills just for the sake of a good game. Top rated games in cable TV channels are as follows.
- Football (NFL And College)
- Basketball
- Baseball
- Hockey
- Cricket and Others
Now if you are a sports fan, we have good news for you! Read on to as we break down the best ways to watch your favorite games without cable and we present them to you listed separately for each of the above mentioned games. These are tested and approved by many enthusiastic sports fans.
- NFL Game Rewind
- Directv Sunday Ticket (non-subscribers)
- NBA League
- MLB.tv
- NHL GameCenter
- WatchESPN.com (formerly ESPN3)
Before we go into any of those options let’s touch on the best one. Over the Air antenna. If you have the TV that support OTA it is by far the best way to watch live sports. You are limited to local channels but the absolutely free OTA reception would let you watch plenty of live sports in your local area. We will detail out an overview of and how-to on OTA reception in a separate article.
The leader in sports today is surely ESPN and regardless of sport they provide plenty of live and rewind video in their service at WatchESPN.com.
The catch with ESPN’s video offering is that you must be a paying subscriber to one of the associated DSL or Cable providers in order to watch (Time-warner, ATT, etc)
Although it may not be free WatchESPN is a valid option for many users which we wanted to mention up front.
Let us move on to an in detail description of which sport to watch in which method and the advantages / features that are special to each sport.
1. Football
If you are a football fan, NFL Game rewind is the best online solution for you to catch up with your favorite matches. This offers current games and also up to two seasons back. The biggest disadvantage is that you cannot watch the games live. The service features HD DVR, video markers for the greatest plays and an abridged version of each game in about 30 minutes. The next option includes every game, excluding commercials, timeouts and all other times but which the game is on. The cost for NFL Rewind is $75 for the entire season. While not free that is still a pretty good deal to watch every game of the season if you can deal with the delay. Each game is available to watch via replay after the Sunday night game ends.
Directv has very recently announced they will in fact offer a Sunday Ticket subscription for $250 per season to stream (live) all of the Directv Football Games. These are limited by any blackout restrictions and Sunday night games are likely not included.
2. Basketball
Basketball is another fan-crazed sport that once you get in you just cannot leave. NBA League Pass is there to help you catching up with any game. Moreover you can watch up to 3 games at once and get access to the entire season as well. This allows you to replay the same game if you want to refresh or take up with if you miss a certain point.
3. Baseball
If it is baseball you are addicted to, MLB.tv is ready to give you access to all the current and past matches in HD with statistics to enlighten you comparatively about games. You can sit comfortably in your home having a set-top box experience without having to pay all the huge cable bills.
4. Hockey
NHL GameCenter Live is dedicated specially to Canadians who show special liking to Hockey games over anything else. Here you can get a real time experience in any game you need on demand. Game Center has a slow motion DVR feature, so you can watch and re-watch the best performances and bumps refreshing the excitement and fun.
5. Cricket
Cricket is a known craze especially among England, Africa and South Asian counties. It is similar to that of Football craze in America. For those passionate cricket fans, WatchESPN.com is the ideal place to get access to all the live and on demand games. The only downside of this is the advertisements you have to watch time to time. Overall the HD experience and the DVD controls give a fantastic experience watching any game you like.
These are only a few legal ways we found to help you in the quest of cord cutting. There can be many more ways of replacing your cable TV out there. Do not hesitate to go out of the frame and look for the ways of cord cutting, how to watch sports without paying the bulky bills to cable TV companies.
