It’s that time again for basketball fans and even people who never watch but fill out a bracket anyway. The NCAA Tournament will sort of tip off Tuesday with teams “playing in” to the tournament. But the games people bracket for are set to start with a basketball extravaganza this Thursday. If you want to stream the games you will need access to 4 channels. Those would be CBS, TNT, TBS and True TV. Not every TV provider carries the lineup so check out our guide to see who does.
Who has all of the channels for the games?
Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV will deliver all of the channels you need with no strings attached. And in fact YouTube TV is running a special with 10 days for free. If you grab that up on Thursday it would provide all the channels through that first two big weeks of the tournament. Then if you fall in love with all the channels you can get 6 months for $69.99.
Hulu will also provide all four networks as well. At the moment there are not any notable specials but keep an eye on it. What you do get from Hulu with live TV is access to Disney + and ESPN+ along with on-demand access to programming from all of its TV partners and multiple movies and TV shows. That’s a lot of programming and it comes with a higher cost of $82.99. For that cost users get ad-supported versions of all three services. Customers looking for an ad-free experience on their Disney+ and Hulu on-demand selections can pony up for $95.99 per month.
Other ways to stream the Tournament
Sling TV and Paramount+
Sling TV is a streaming service that provides cable channels but in most markets does not provide broadcast channels. Sling TV encourages users to pull in broadcast channels with an antenna. This is what I do for my own TV viewing. If you want a straight up stream of CBS Paramount+ provides a live stream of CBS sports content. In the case of Sling TV the service has three basic tiers of service. All include the cable channels TNT, TBS and TruTV. New customers can nabe the service for a month at $29.00. If you have good reception in your area via an antenna you are all set from there. Otherwise you can add Paramount+ for $12.99. That is actually the Paramount+ Showtime package. So it brings a lot more than CBS. It includes access to original programming, Showtime movies and TV shows and on demand access to a ton of programming and movies from across Paramount’s vast library.
Keep it simple with the March Madness App
The March Madness app does not provide access to any games on its own. It allows users to sign in with their chosen providers. By doing so users will be able to bounce right to the games they want to see without searching for the correct channel. That is seriously helpful when there are four channels carrying the games in the early rounds.
So what is the best deal?
Free is a really good price. And if you are mostly focussed on the first two rounds you can get that with YouTube TV as long as you make sure to cancel the service in time. For those who want to hang on till the end Sling TV Orange or Blue with an antenna is a lot less painful than the range between $70.00-$96.00.
So get those brackets filled out, figure out which mascot is the cutest or what ever your tradition is so you can say you called it from the start.
