This is the third post I’ve written about sports and streaming this month. (See here and here for the previous ones.) Sorry. I guess I’ve been retreating into watching (and reading about) sports because the “serious” news is too stressful right now.
I mentioned the new ESPN streaming thing in one of my previous posts. I gave in and signed up for it yesterday. My previous Disney+ bundle was the “legacy” one that included ad-free Disney+ and ad-supported Hulu. That was $22/month. There’s no equivalent bundle with the new ESPN service. The bundle with ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu is $30/month. The bundle with ad-free Disney+ and Hulu is $39/month. So I went ahead and signed up for that. It’s probably too expensive, and I don’t know if I’ll stick with it. And that $39/month rate is a promo; after a year, it goes to $45/month.
It just seems like all of this stuff is getting too expensive and too complicated. I’m still pretty happy with my MLB.TV subscription, which lets me watch most of the Phillies games. (I wish I could watch all of them, but I guess it’s good enough.)
I’m still not sure if I’m going to be happy with my NFL situation this season. I’m still planning on watching RedZone on Sundays (via NFL+) and hoping that’ll scratch my football itch. And I can watch Thursday Night Football on Amazon, Sunday Night Football on Peacock, and Monday Night Football via my new ESPN subscription. So that should be enough.
I’m also trying to see if I can get into Premier League Soccer. I was randomly clicking around in the Peacock app last Saturday, and happened to notice that it was week one of their season. And Peacock has a whip-around show (similar to RedZone I guess) called Goal Rush, so I can watch that for a couple of hours on Saturday and see bits and pieces of a few different games. So now it’s week two, and I’ve watched a bit of this stuff, and it’s kind of fun, though I’m mostly treating it as background noise. I haven’t developed any real interest in it yet.
And I briefly thought about giving up on the NFL and following the CFL instead. That thought came from the storyline that ran in the Crankshaft comic strip recently, where the main character went to Winnipeg to see a Blue Bombers game. It turns out that streaming rights for the CFL in the US aren’t terribly complicated, but they’re not terribly convenient for me either. Some games run on CBS Sports Network, which I’d probably have if I still had YouTube TV, and which might be included with Paramount+, though I’m not sure. The rest of the games can be watched on CFL+, which is a free streaming service. So that sounds good! It’s free! But there’s no Apple TV app. I’d have to pull up the website on my laptop and then AirPlay it to the Apple TV. That’s too much work.
So overall, my plan for distracting myself with sports for the next few months is approximately as follows:
- Phillies games on weeknights, via MLB.TV.
- Some other random baseball games on ESPN and Apple TV+.
- NFL games on Sunday via RedZone on NFL+.
- Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night football via Amazon, Peacock, and ESPN.
- Maybe Premier League soccer on Peacock on Saturdays.
This will probably all fall apart at some point. If the Giants are as bad as they were last year, I may lose interest in the NFL. Or, conversely, if they do well, I might get frustrated about not being able to watch all of the games.
And I don’t even want to think about how complicated watching the MLB and NFL playoffs will be. Well, that’s a problem for another day.