Lumo TV › Live sport without cable
Everything about cutting cable is easy except sport. The rights are split across more services every year, and following one team can quietly cost more than the cable package you cancelled. Here is the honest arithmetic.
Films and drama are broad, so almost any service has something you will watch. Sport is specific: you do not want "some football", you want that match, and it is on whichever service bought that particular package.
That is why cord-cutters end up with four subscriptions. Each one holds a slice of the season, and missing a slice means missing the games that matter.
YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo and Sling carry most of the American sports networks. They are legitimate, reliable and have proper guides.
They are also no longer cheap. The big ones now cost about as much as the cable package people left, and regional sports networks are frequently missing, which is exactly where local teams live.
NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV and F1 TV sell straight to you. If you follow one league and one only, this is usually the best value and the best picture.
Watch for blackouts. League passes routinely black out the local team, the one you are most likely to want, because a local broadcaster holds those rights.
A one-off $30 antenna gets you the free-to-air networks in crisp HD with no subscription at all, and a surprising amount of major sport is on those networks.
It is the highest value per pound in this entire article and it costs nothing to run. Start here before paying anyone.
These carry a large number of live channels in one app, including sports channels from several countries, for a single monthly fee. Lumo TV is one of them, so treat this section as us describing our own category.
The advantage is coverage and price: one subscription instead of four, and international channels alongside domestic ones, which matters if you follow a league from another country. The trade-off is that you are paying a service rather than the league or the broadcaster.
Whatever you choose, check for catch-up, the ability to scroll back and start a match that already finished.
Channel counts are marketing. Catch-up is what makes a service usable when the game kicks off while you are at work or asleep, and it is the single feature people say they would not go back to living without.
10,000+ live channels from the US, UK, Canada and worldwide, 216,000+ shows on demand, and 7 day catch-up on every channel. No card needed, and we set your device up for you.
Messages started here include a short code for the page you came from (e.g. LT-GUIDES). It is not unique to you and you can delete it before sending.