Starting this week, some big-time non-conference football games, as well as small college and mid-major pigskin showdowns, will be available streaming live on ESPN Plus during the 2024 college football season — ESPN’s direct-to-customer, low-cost live sports streaming service. Now, you may have questions about what the service is, what TV channel you can find it on, what it costs and what a subscription to ESPN+ includes.
Start watching college football on ESPN+ now
What is ESPN Plus? Is it a TV channel?
ESPN Plus is a live sports streaming service available from ESPN, but it isn’t made available through your local cable provider. ESPN Plus is NOT a TV channel and is not available on cable and satellite packages from companies like Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon, Frontier and DirecTV. ESPN Plus is not included on those services because the service is a direct-to-consumer platform, which helps keep the cost low and available to everyone despite their location.
Whether you’re a football fanatic looking to supplement your current local and national sports cable offerings, or just a casual fan that needs help watching that one game or event you can’t miss, ESPN+ has a ton to offer at a very reasonable price.
How much is ESPN Plus per month? What does it cost?
Heading into the 2024 season, ESPN Plus costs just $10.99 a month (you can cancel at any time, so if you wanted to sign up to watch just one game or event, you’d only be charged for one month). You can also purchase the service at a slight discount if you buy a year-long subscription for $109.99. So, for under $11 you can try it out for a month and see if it works for you, or just wait until the platform has something you want to watch and give it a shot then.
Try it out: Get access, start watching ESPN+ now for under $11
How do I get ESPN Plus for free?
Unfortunately, there is no way to get ESPN Plus for free, and no free trial period offered at this time. However, there are sometimes promotional deals offered by some phone service or internet service providers to entice customers to sign up with these businesses. For example, providers like Verizon or AT&T have previously had offers to entice new customers to switch. ESPN+ is not currently included with Amazon Prime, but you can save some money on ESPN+ if you sign up for a Disney bundle deal that includes access to Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ for under $15/month. This is a fantastic deal if you have a family and are already paying for Disney Plus or Hulu separately. If you have separate accounts for these services within your family, and want to merge them, you can call Disney directly (800-727-1800) and their customer service will find a way to merge those accounts for you. I’ve done this personally and it was a breeze.
What games and teams will be available to watch on ESPN+ this season?
ESPN+ won’t have all the biggest nationally-broadcast games, but it will have a huge selection of college football games to watch from Thursday through Saturday each week during the 2024 college football season. ESPN Plus essentially broadcasts all games that aren’t big enough, or don’t make the list, of ESPN’s main networks for live TV broadcast. For example, there are tons of non-conference games this season featuring SEC and Big 12 teams like Auburn, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky and more. If you are a fan of a smaller team, programs like Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools are featured each week on the service as well.
ESPN Plus also has media rights to broadcast several other mid-major college football leagues and teams. This includes teams from leagues like the America East, MEAC, Atlantic 10, Patriot League, Conference USA, the Sun Belt, SWAC, the MAC and so many more. If your team is a mid-major, there’s a good chance ESPN+ will be broadcasting their games. Here’s a look at the ESPN+ college football broadcast schedule for Week 1 as an example of the kind of teams you’ll see each week.
Schedule: These college football games are on ESPN+ in Week 1
While ESPN Plus does give you access to a vast selection of live games from pro and college sports, the service will not give you access to live sports and programs being broadcast live on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, ESPN Classic and ESPN News. To watch those channels, you will still need cable, satellite or a live TV streaming service provider login. In this case, consider live TV streaming services like Fubo, or DirecTV Stream, or the cheapest option in Sling (currently running a promotional offer, first month is as low as $15 depending on which package you select).
What is included with ESPN Plus? What sports does it have?
ESPN Plus is great if you like watching a lot of live college sports, which includes smaller events like volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, soccer and more. But that’s not all they offer. What makes ESPN Plus so worth the affordable pricetag is that they offer so much outside of that. ESPN Plus offers weekly UFC and other mixed martial arts events as well as a bevy of professional soccer offerings including Italian Serie A league matches, German Bundesliga matches, English FA Cup games and other tournament matches as well as regular live streaming of Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball games, NHL hockey and a lot more. ESPN Plus is essentially an on demand sports streaming service that broadcasts live games and events from essentially everything ESPN can’t fit onto their regular channels due to schedule conflicts. ESPN Plus also has a growing list of original shows and programs that are exclusive to the ESPN+ platform like documentaries, athlete profiles, original shows and more.
A subscription to ESPN+ also gives you free access to ESPN Insider on the ESPN website, which includes exclusive content and stories that you wouldn’t get without that account.
How do I get ESPN Plus on my TV?
ESPN Plus is not a TV channel, so you will have to access it through the ESPN app. If you have a smart TV that is hooked up to wifi, or connected to the internet with an ethernet cable, you should have no problem downloading the ESPN app. If you don’t have a smart TV, but do have a streaming device, you can get ESPN Plus by adding the app to any of the following streaming devices that you currently use to watch TV and movies:
Apple TVRokuAmazon Fire TVAndroid TVXbox One or Xbox Series XPlaystation 4 or 5
You can also watch ESPN Plus by using the app on your desktop computer, or with your internet browser by visiting plus.espn.com.
Bottom line: Is ESPN Plus worth the money?
What makes ESPN Plus so attractive to cable subscribers and cord-cutters alike is the ease with which a customer can tailor the service to meet their needs. For example, If you are a college football fan who never tires of watching the game, you’ll have countless options to watch on college football Saturdays through the fall and can cancel the service once the season ends with no penalty. On the other hand, if you’re a soccer fan just looking to watch a particular game that is not available through your local provider, ESPN Plus often carries a lot of high-profile matches. If the match is available on the service, you can sign up for a month for under $11 to watch the game and still get access to the platform for the rest of the month until your login expires. Either way, you only had to pay around $10 to watch your team play instead of having to go through the rigamarole of finding a bootleg live stream on some sketchy website rife with pesky popup ads.
