With the 2020 NFL season now into week 3, there are plenty of options for following the most popular sport in the US. Paying up …
With the 2020 NFL season now into week 3, there are plenty of options for following the most popular sport in the US. Paying up for a cable subscription is the simplest solution. It allows you to watch your local team and a bunch of other teams without worrying about which channels are available. For cord-cutters who want to save some money, however, NFL football streaming options get a bit more complicated. Your best bet is to subscribe to a live TV streaming service but the sheer number of channels that carry live games — local CBS, NBC and Fox channels, as well as the national feeds of NFL Network and ESPN — means you’ll either have to get a relatively expensive service or make a compromise and miss some games every week. (Editors’ note: CNET and CBS are both owned by ViacomCBS.) The only way to get a full football experience is to have a whole litany of channels from your TV provider. Sunday NFC games are largely on Fox, AFC games are on CBS and Sunday night football is on NBC. Monday night football is only on ESPN. Though Fox has most Thursday night games, there are several that are NFL Network-only (and streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch). With all that in mind, we offer our recommendations for the best way to watch NFL without cable. Read more: YouTube TV vs. Hulu vs. Sling TV vs. Philo vs. FuboTV vs. AT&T TV Now: 100 channels compared Last year our streaming service pick for NFL fans was PlayStation Vue at $55 a month, but Sony shut down its service earlier this year. That leaves cord-cutters with two more expensive options. At $65 per month each, a FuboTV Family plan and regular YouTube TV subscription check all the NFL channel boxes. Local channels CBS, NBC and Fox are included in many markets, as are ESPN and the NFL Network, so you can watch Monday night, Thursday night and Sunday night. Want RedZone for following your fantasy team? That’s available on either service as part of an add-on for an extra $11 per month. YouTube TV users can add the Sports Plus add-on by clicking on your profile and going to Settings, then the Membership tab. FuboTV users can go into My Profile and choose Manage Add-ons for its Sports Plus offering. Both YouTube TV and FuboTV’s Family plan allow for three simultaneous streams, with YouTube offering unlimited cloud DVR and FuboTV offering 500 hours of storage. The two services are widely available too, with apps on iOS and Android, the web and on TVs through Roku, Chromecast, Android TV, Apple TV and Fire TV. If we had to choose between the two, we’d recommend YouTube TV overall. While FuboTV does get points for broadcasting the Fox Thursday night games in 4K, YouTube TV has access to Turner channels like TNT, TBS and CNN, as well as PBS, and a superior DVR.
