But to watch most of this year's important bike races, you'll need to subscribe to three streaming services that can cost upwards of $40 a month. no way.
Welcome to the era of sports streaming. You can watch almost any game, match, or race instantly, but it comes at a cost.
Streaming companies and sports leagues want to squeeze every penny out of fans who want to watch games at home. Enjoy March Madness starting this week. You may have to pay about $50 a month to stream college basketball and other sports next year.
How watching sports became decentralized and expensive
Back when nearly every American subscribed to cable TV, the dirty secret was that we all paid for sports, whether we watched the games or not.
A large portion of my monthly cable bill went toward paying for networks like ESPN, TNT, and Fox, which broadcast football, basketball, and baseball. Cable prices made sports available on television, making sports owners and television companies very rich.
What's changed is that fewer than half of American households now pay for cable. Sports broadcasting and streaming companies are going after the small number of people willing to pay for cable services and services like Google's YouTube TV and Peacock that stream games.
You'll probably have to find your favorite sports on multiple TV and streaming services, whether it's cable or streaming, and pay more than you used to.
Naveen Sarma, media and communications expert and managing director of S&P Global Ratings, said sports fans were responsible for the confusion.
We may not have realized that cable has made it possible to watch expensive programs like sports at relatively affordable prices. “Consumers have historically not understood how expensive content is,” Sarma said.
Would you pay $30 to $50 for your favorite sport?
My messy bike math includes races spread across three streaming services.
Peacock costs $5.99 a month with commercials or $11.99 without ads and streams select races like the Tour de France.
For the first time this year, Max (previously known as HBO Max) is streaming a different set of races.
Max costs at least $9.99 per month and requires Max's add-on sports streaming service called B/R Sports. It's free for now, but will soon cost $9.99 per month on top of the Max subscription.
If you love sports, get familiar with B/R. Also, select games from baseball, hockey, and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament will be streamed.
FloSports, the third streaming service, is the only place in the US to watch an even more disparate collection of bike races. If you sign up for a year, it will cost you $150, or if you pay monthly, it will cost you $29.99.
This tab can run close to $40 a month, or even more, to watch most major bike races. It wasn't this high even a year ago.
(You can watch cycling races for free on overseas distribution sites and pirated sites, but I won't watch them.)
Be realistic about how much you will pay for sports.
If you think it's ridiculous to pay $40 a month to watch cycling, think about the cost of your sports habits.
To watch every National Football League game last season, you might have needed Sunday Ticket on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, ABC, NFL Network, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and maybe YouTube.
And soon Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of Disney's ESPN, Fox and Max, will launch a new streaming service for televised sports, including March Madness, NFL games and NASCAR races. price? Probably about $50 a month.
If you like sports, you can actually watch any sport, but you'll probably need to juggle and pay for multiple TV and streaming services.
It's still better than when American cycling fans could watch Tour de France highlights on TV. But I have no choice but to reduce it.
I will only subscribe to Peacock, even if it means missing out on some of my favorite races. I'm disappointed. And that's a feeling all of us sports fans have to get used to.
