Sometimes life gets in the way of us doing the things we love. And by things we love, we clearly mean watching sports. It could be a family wedding that someone rudely planned for the day of a cup final where your team is playing. Work may have asked you to stay behind to help with an upcoming project to stop you from catching the late-night games. However, thanks to streaming services, you can now catch all the action on your smartphone.
Yes, streaming sports has never been more common than it is now, but with so many different streaming services available, it can be hard to decide which ones to choose. But that’s why we’re here today, to help identify some of the best apps, or types of apps, that can help make sure you don’t miss any of the action.
So, without further delay, let’s see which apps are the ones you need to be downloading onto your smartphone or tablet so you can get streaming and stop missing out.
5 best apps for streaming sports
Amazon Prime Video
They may not necessarily be known that well for streaming sports, but Amazon has begun to accumulate TV rights deals for several sports around the world. They have a selection of games from the Premier League, they offer coverage of a few of the big tennis tournaments and even cricket. And in the US, they are in talks about showcasing NFL games as well, so they clearly mean serious business.
But what makes Amazon Prime Video so good, is there are no additional charges for the events they show. It’s so far, all included in your Prime subscription, although we imagine in the future as they get more content, one of two things will happen. Prices will go up, or you’ll pay extra for sports. But I wouldn’t mind that because their coverage of the stuff they do have is amazing. There are so many added extras you can bring up such as live in-play stats, it really is the pinnacle of streaming sports.
Betting Apps
You may not realise it, but many betting apps nowadays also stream live sports as well. You’re not likely to get big events on there, but they do have a lot of South American football and European basketball. Some sites make you make a minimum bet to be able to watch, others just want you to have funds deposited in your account.
However, in the US, there are talks of a FanDuel possibly getting rights to air some NFL games through FanDuel TV and FanDuel+. This would be a major coup for the sports betting company in a growing and competitive market across America as more and more states look to legalise sports betting.
BT Sport and ESPN
Depending on if you’re in the UK or the US, you’ll likely have access to one of these two apps for streaming sports. They allow you to log in if you have a subscription with them on your cable or satellite packages, or you can buy a standalone subscription. Either way, it gives you access to all their content both live and the ability to watch stuff after it has streamed as well as access to highlights and other programming.
The one downside for BT Sports at least if you used to be able to log in and cast it to your TV. But they have been trying to cut back on that and now you must pay extra for that feature. There are ways around this, but you’ll have to google that to find out for yourself.
DAZN
Don’t ask me how to pronounce this one, I’ve heard it said in so many ways, I’ve no idea who is right or wrong. But I know that DAZN is looking to become the Netflix of sports. Over in Germany, they’ve agreed on a deal for rights to stream Bundesliga games, and they also have several high-profile boxers having signed contracts with them from around the world to air some big fights. A lot of the content is geo-restricted though, but a VPN can easily get you around that.
It may not seem worth it now unless you get the content you want in your country, but rest assured, DAZN mean business and we expect them to go keep going and bidding for more content as they look to expand. If their plans take off, we could be looking at one of the biggest streaming services dedicated to showcasing live sports.
IPTV Services
Yes, IPTV services may well be illegal and we’re not telling you to go out and get one. However, they are often much better than traditional providers because they allow the streaming of channels from all around the world. This means that the 3 PM kick-offs in the UK for football which are not aired on TV, can be watched because there are no restrictions for broadcasters overseas.
Providers will often say it is these types of services that push prices up for their customers but that’s just utter rubbish. The fact BT Sport decided to pay £900m for Champions League rights when they first got them and then decided to give it away for free to all BT Broadband customers, that’s the reason.
They hike up prices and mask it by trying to point the blame elsewhere. But yeah, we’re not condoning getting one instead of paying a legit provider for half the content, but we can see where people’s frustrations come from and that providers are using poor excuses to mask greed and poor decisions. And when a year subscription is reportedly the same price as the cost of a monthly subscription to someone like Sky, we don’t blame people trying to cut pennies in these times.
Conclusion
And there you have it, a mixture of different types of apps that are great for streaming sports, so you don’t miss any of the action. We have technically listed more than five apps there, as we have bundled a couple into groups, but many in those groups are very similar and have the same kind of content. But it’s best to look around to see what each one offers and whether it suits your needs or not.
We hope this list has been helpful. So, if you do have some success with any of these suggested apps, please let us know in the comments below. Likewise, if you have a go-to app for streaming sports we haven’t included, feel free to drop details to them so we can check them out. For now, though, it’s time for us to say goodbye and sign off.
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