Cord cutters turn to video streaming services for many reasons. If you want to watch the occasional NHL or MLB game, daily soccer matchups, lots of college sports, or PPV UFC events, then ESPN+ is for you. ESPN’s streaming service offers a respectable lineup of live and on-demand sports on the cheap and access to its top-notch 30 for 30 and E:60 productions. The service doesn’t, however, include flagship ESPN shows, such as SportsCenter, or its live NFL and NBA broadcasts. Still, it may be cheap enough by itself or (as part of a bundle) to warrant a spot in your streaming lineup.
What Can You Watch on ESPN+?
The first thing to understand about ESPN+ is that it is not the same as the regular ESPN channel on cable or the channel that live TV services, such as Sling TV or Hulu + Live TV, offer. ESPN+ complements the main channel but does not include its core programming. You can view the entire schedule of live sports events on ESPN+ via ESPN’s site without a subscription.
ESPN+’s offerings break down into three main content areas: live sports, ESPN+ originals, and ESPN shows. Of the major national sports leagues in the US, ESPN+ offers live NHL (only during January and February, the first two months of the season) and out-of-market MLB games, plus full replays of many of those games. You can watch NBA G League matchups on ESPN+, too. If you want to watch NBA or NFL games (including ESPN’s Monday Night Football), you need to turn to a different sports streaming service.
Sports fans should check out our dedicated roundups for the best NFL streaming services, NBA streaming services, and MLB streaming services.
As for other sports, ESPN+ includes PGA Tour coverage, but not full broadcasts of tournaments. Instead, it shows featured holes for the last two days of an event. ESPN+ also streams out-of-market MLS games, matchups from top international soccer leagues (A-League, Belgium Jupiler League, Bundesliga, Division 1 Féminine, Indian Super League, Italian Serie A, and W-League), and other international sports, such as cricket and rugby.
One area, in particular, that ESPN+ excels is in its coverage of men’s and women’s NCAA sports, including basketball, baseball, field hockey, football, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, track and field, volleyball, and wrestling.) Another big draw for ESPN+ is its combat sports: UFC, Top Rank, and Professional Fighting League (PFL). To watch UFC events, of course, you need to pay an additional monthly or annual fee. Events from Top Rank Boxing and PFL and already-aired UFC fights are included in your subscription. Dazn is another option for MMA and boxing fans. Dazn streams events from Golden Boy Promotions, Matchroom Boxing, GGG Promotions, Bellator, Combate Americas, and others.
ESPN produces in-house series exclusively for the ESPN+ platform, including Detail, a franchise that features in-depth analysis from top competitors across different sports; ESPN FC, a daily soccer show; In the Crease, which provides daily hockey analysis and highlights; and Peyton’s Places, a multipart documentary starring Peyton Manning.
Most of ESPN’s flagship shows are missing, though, including Around the Horn, First Take, NFL Live, Outside the Lines, Pardon the Interruption, and SportsCenter. You do get the entire archive of ESPN’s 30 for 30, E:60, and SC Featured on the service, as well as Greeny (Mike Greenberg’s radio show) and SportsNation.
Based on its offerings, ESPN+ is more comparable to a single-network service like CBS All Access than live TV streaming services such as fuboTV or YouTube TV. Similar to ESPN+, CBS All Access grants you access to live CBS coverage (both sports and news broadcasts), CBS originals (such as Star Trek Discovery and The Good Fight), and on-demand shows from CBS’s vast archives (including The Twilight Zone and all the old Star Trek series). NBC’s Peacock is also emerging as a potential competitor to ESPN+. The paid tiers of Peacock include Premier League, IndyCar, and WWE coverage. Peacock even streamed an NFL playoff game last season.
How Much Does ESPN+ Cost?
ESPN+ costs $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year. You can also get ESPN+ in a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu (ad-supported) for $13.99 per month. If you don’t want to watch ads on Hulu, the bundle with ESPN+, Disney+, and Hulu’s commercial-free plan is $18.99 per month. Joining with Disney+ and Netflix, ESPN+ no longer offers a free trial.
If you intend to watch UFC fights, you can currently purchase UFC 259 PPV for $69.99 or an annual subscription to both ESPN+ and the UFC PPV for $89.98.
Since the time of our last review, the prices of all other live TV streaming services have increased substantially. FuboTV now starts at $59.99 per month, while Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV charge $64.99 per month. Sling TV’s Orange and Blue prices recently went up to $35 each. CBS All Access starts at $5.99 and Peacock’s Premium tier costs $4.99 per month.
Aside from watching ESPN+ on the web, you can download apps for mobile platforms (Android and iOS), media streaming devices (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku), and gaming devices (PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Series S|X, and Oculus Go).
ESPN+ on the Web
To sign up for an ESPN+ subscription, you just need to provide an email address and a password. To access ESPN+ via the web, either sign in on the regular ESPN site and then navigate to the ESPN+ tab or go directly to espn.com/watch. You can manage your subscription from the web.
You navigate the experience via a top menu bar with the following sections: Featured, Originals, Browse, Schedules & Replays, and Articles. The Features section highlights some of the top live and upcoming events airing on the service, along with notable on-demand shows and ESPN+ originals. The Originals section shows only those exclusive shows. In the Browse section, you can filter the catalog by sport, league, conference, or show.
Know that not everything you see in the Browse section is available on ESPN+. Some shows and live events require you to authenticate with your cable or video streaming service account. A golden badge in the upper left corner of each show’s thumbnail identifies things that are available on ESPN+. I would like ESPN to break out the entire ESPN+ experience into its own streaming interface to avoid this confusion.
The Schedules and Replays tab works fine. You can view live, upcoming, and past events, as well as filter by sport and ESPN channel. I wish ESPN+ provided a way to add an event to a watchlist, but the service does not support that feature. One relatively new perk to an ESPN+ subscription is access to exclusive articles with in-depth sports analysis. Some movie streaming services, such as Mubi and Filmatique, also offer editorial content as part of their subscriptions.
A show’s details page includes the runtime, year, director, as well as a brief description. ESPN+ also lists titles you may enjoy, but those recommendations don’t appear to be curated in any way. You can’t leave a review or rating on any of the on-demand content, either.
Mobile Experience
ESPN+ exists inside ESPN’s mobile app, aptly called ESPN. I had no trouble downloading the app and signing into my account on an Android 11 device. ESPN+ is the fourth tab over on the bottom navigation bar. The interface looks slick with a black background, white text, and yellow highlights. The app is quick to navigate and didn’t crash during testing. You do have to enable your location before you can watch anything, however.
The ESPN+ section is organized into two tabs: Stream and Articles. The Stream tab functions identically to the web interface’s Featured section. Here you can browse through live sports events and ESPN+’s on-demand shows. The Articles tab is just an interface for reading the exclusive articles you get with your subscription.
In the upper-right corner, there is a search bar and icons for your downloaded content, the sports schedule, and a settings icon. You can search by team, leagues, and events. The Downloads section organizes all your offline titles and lets you browse all the shows that are eligible for offline viewing. Not all features or episodes of a series can be downloaded; you will see a download icon if you can. The ability to download titles from ESPN+ is new since the time of our last review and something we appreciate. For reference, a 20-minute episode took less than two minutes to download.
The Settings section lets you set autoplay preferences, restrict downloads to only over a Wi-Fi connection, and choose a download quality (HD or SD). Closed captions options depend on your device’s built-in settings. You must head to the ESPN website to make any changes to your subscription.
Playback Experience
ESPN+’s playback interface on the web works fine. Aside from the standard playback and volume controls, you get 10-second rewind and fast-forward buttons, a go-to-Live button, and a toggle for the closed captions. You can customize the captions directly from the playback screen, an accessibility option we like to see. ESPN+ allows you to scrub back to the beginning of an event no matter when you tune in, too. The mobile interface looks identical. One advantage of the mobile app is that, on select sporting events, you can view a scorecard of the event below the minimized playback screen.
ESPN+ supports up to three simultaneous streams per account, which is about average. Previously, it supported five concurrent streams, so this is a downgrade. YouTube TV supports three simultaneous streams, too. Hulu + Live TV and fuboTV offer add-ons to expand their support beyond their default of two concurrent streams.
I couldn’t confirm the exact streaming resolution and framerate of ESPN+’s live streams, but, to my eye, playback appeared to reach 1080p and 60fps. Both YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV support 1080p/60fps live streams for select channels on some platforms.
AT&T TV and fuboTV both offer features that allow subscribers to start streams from the beginning of the event and replay events that aired in the past, usually within a limit of three days. ESPN+ enables you to do both of these things, but it’s sometimes unclear which replays of live events are available.
One thing that ESPN+ does not offer is DVR capabilities. For a sports streaming service, that’s a big deal. YouTube TV lets users record an unlimited amount of content and keeps those recordings for nine months. Sling TV provides 50 hours’ worth of DVR storage for as long as your subscription is active. Hulu + Live TV offers an add-on that expands its default DVR storage from 50 to 200 hours and enables the option to skip ads during recordings.
To test ESPN+’s streaming performance, I watched a live NCAA Men’s matchup between the Fort Wayne Ants and Long Island Nets over my home Ethernet connection (200Mbps download). The video didn’t buffer and the audio sounded good, too. I streamed an episode of Peyton’s Places without any issues over a Wi-Fi connection (105Mbps) on my mobile device.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
ESPN+ included closed captions on every live and on-demand program I watched. You can customize the background’s, foreground’s, and window’s color and opacity, as well as the font size and family. ESPN+ does not support audio descriptions for any of its on-demand content. Audio descriptions provide audible narration of on-screen events that would otherwise not be understood from the dialog alone. Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix, and Prime Video are among the best video streaming services for audio descriptions.
ESPN+ does not include any parental control capabilities, but that’s to be expected due to the nature of its content. None of the service’s shows even list parental ratings. Most on-demand video streaming services, including HBO Max and Disney+, allow parents to restrict individual profiles from viewing content above a certain parental rating. Sling TV is the rare live TV streaming service that offers parental control tools.
ESPN+ and VPN
A VPN can help you protect your privacy online and spoof your location. Many video streaming services try to block VPN traffic in an effort to enforce regional streaming restrictions. ESPN+, for its part, is not available outside the US, so it would have a reason to prevent you from streaming over a VPN connection.
For testing, I connected a desktop and mobile device to US-based Mullvad VPN servers and ESPN+ blocked access on both platforms. Even if you find that your VPN and video streaming service work together without issues, they might not always. We recommend that you choose a VPN based on other factors, such as its value, privacy stances, and security features.
Watch Select Sports and Sports Shows
If you don’t have a cable subscription and want to watch sports on the cheap, ESPN+ is a solid bet. It doesn’t provide any live coverage of NBA or NFL games, but you can watch some NHL and MLB games, lots of soccer, and an impressive amount of college sports. If you want to watch UFC fights, ESPN+ is not optional. You don’t get ESPN’s premier programming, such as SportsCenter or NFL Live, on the service, but ESPN+’s original shows and archives of prestige shows (30 for 30 and E:60) may be a suitable alternative. We would like ESPN+ to add DVR capabilities.
Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV are our Editors’ Choice winners for live TV streaming because of their excellent channel lineups (including for sports fans) and streaming features. Netflix is our Editors’ Choice pick for on-demand video streaming because of its top-notch originals. ESPN+ works best as a sports-centric companion service to Netflix or as part of the Disney+ and Hulu bundle.
