New Streaming TV Options: Will They Actually Save You Money?
New streaming TV options are here for fall 2025. ESPN, FOX One, DIRECTV Genre Packs, Sling Passes and more are being marketed as cheaper alternatives for cord cutters. But will they really save you money? In this video, I compare the new services for both sports fans and non-sports fans, and show how they stack up against big bundle services like YouTube TV.
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Other than Prime, I’ve abandoned all the paid services this year. Wasn’t a hard decision for me, because over the last 3 years, I’ve only had live tv steaming (Hulu+ LiveTV) during the college football season. I was excited for Venu and would have that if it happened, but blame Fubo for that failing.
After last year, I decided I was done with hulu, because they raised their rates and all I was interested in from hulu was college football and the occasional Disney star wars content. I checked other services and they weren’t really any cheaper and didn’t have anything special to offer.
Being a Big 12 fan is even harder. With their games now being spread out across, the ABC/ESPN Networks, ESPN Select (formerly ESPN+), TNT, TruTV, CBS, CBSSN, so on, by the time I got all the services I would need to watch all their games, I might as well pay $150+/month for a hard cable connection. Not doing it.
YouTube, Hulu, Fubo, none of them are worth what they charging. They are getting too close to what Cable companies charge, considering, you still need an internet service rather than internet bundled in with your Cable/TV provider. Also, right or not, I have discovered that you can watch pretty much any college football game for free now.
Just got a email from youtube tv there fox channels renewal contract is up Aug 27th so might have to cut that
For me Netflix and Apple TV will do.
To keep it real, if you’re watching nfl locally or nationally it’s useful to use an Antenna, Peacock, Prime and ESPN DTC (An antenna will save you the money especially since it already has NBC CBS Fox and ABC). For RedZone, find the cheapest Live TV option
This is my plan moving forward
Antenna
Disney Bundle + the limited offer with ESPN Unlimited
Peacock (I decided to initially cancel and force Peacock to send me an offer for $2.99 a month for the next 6 months)
And use HBO Max sparingly for a few months (mainly during hockey season).
Would only have to spend as much as $50 a month during hockey season (only $5 more than a single monthly payment of Sling TV), and $33 a month when I don’t use HBO Max.
Dropped Hulu ($90 mnth) and went with Philo ($27) and an OTA. Since college football is starting, I signed up for ESPN ($29) to give it a try. If it works out, I’m saving $30 a month vs Hulu.
I don’t like a lot of the packages streaming services have to offer. I’ve tried them all and I’ve stuck with DirecTV. I still believe you should pay for the channels you wanna watch instead of buying bundles packages. If you break down the monthly payments of most of these big bundle packages, you’re paying like 1 dollar a channel. Then that’s what I wanna pay. I wanna pay 1 dollar a channel of my choosing. You want the locals that’s like 5 dollars or 6 dollars. Throw in some other channels that you watch regularly and that’s it. Instead of paying 85 dollars a month, you’ll have like 20 bucks a months for 20 channels. That’s fair. These steaming services will not do that because they’re corporate money suckers.
I wish Hulu Live TV offered a annual discount. I pay $83.49 a month which is ok but with switching to US mobile in order to get rid of a monthly cell phone bill I wish Hulu did a thing and giving a discount if you did it. So over the services
We have no interest in sports. We only stream free on demand with ads. We HATE live streaming!
Would never sign fir ESPN or FOX1, specially Fox News, pure crap!
I like sports mainly college football and NFL and NBA. I also watch some tv shows, movies and news. I’m frustrated with spreading out of everything across 5-7 different apps.
Spreading out of the sports has become maddening
I noticed that in all of your videos you do not talk about the possibility of getting over the air broadcast TV as a way to save some money. At this point over the air TV is not drm encrypted so if a person has the ability, they can get all of the local sports, news over the air with a television. That is what I do, I use the channels DVR application, it allows me to watch over the air television, record it and time shift over commercials. 0:04
We finally have high speed fiber and can do streaming. I need hockey, NHL and my local team. I can’t figure out what to do now that I can finally dump Directv. I had no idea how complicated this would be.
Vhs tapes more free watching more money saving than Disney plus is and Netflix
My plan is simple. I have a $500 maximum streaming budget. My family and I can do whatever we want, but the annual cap is $500. So we do a lot of rotating. Some months, no paid services in order to pick up SlingTV the following month. It’s really fun and teaches the kids how to budget.
Sticking to Sirius Xm for $5.00 a month platinum for all my sports.
Im a cable person and i dont pay for any streaming services. Streaming was supposed to be ad free, that changed, prices were going to stay cheap, that changed.
DIRECTV stream is the way to go
YouTube tv has gotten too expensive. I want something where I can get local channels and pretty much nothing else. Then I would supplement with apps
I was satisfied with YouTube TV but they are playing games and canceling channels at the start of college football. I’m not playing those games!
I love my free tubi
I do several options for my sports. I mainly listen through Sirius/XM for $10 per month per year. I recently got Peacock for around $1 per month with an Instacart Plus membership (Got it on sale). Will use Peacock to watch the Notre Dame home games and some NFL Sunday Night football games. I got Paramount Plus with my Walmart Plus membership for less than $5 per month. I will use that to watch any Buffalo Bills games that my local CBS station will air. It will be around $16 per month (after all is said and done). I will try out the ESPN streaming service for my church’s fall festival (to air the SEC games that Saturday). I sadly can’t get locals where I live through an antenna.
Love you tube TV but, received a letter as of Aug 27 all FOX channels will not be aired. Due to contract issues. So you tube is gone
I’m canceling YouTube TV and going with the Fox ESPN bundle hands-down that suits my needs
In my family of 5 all of us are adults, we pay for one service each share passwords. We have Netflix ($25), Paramount+ ($13), HBO Max ($21), Peacock ($14) and Disney+ ($16) together is $89 per month before tax for us 5. If we think a service is getting too expensive we will cancel it and try another or shorten how many subscriptions we have. None of care about live TV and these apps has enough sports to keep us satisfied without needing to over spend on more.
I was an early adopter to cord cutting back in 2015 when Comcast/Xfinity was charging over $200 a month for cable and I was barely watching TV like that then so the flexibility of streaming services and the fact I don’t suffer from FOMO so I don’t mind canceling a service if its not good and missing out on a few shows works for me. Plenty of services my family and I paid for a month or 2, watched a show then canceled only to never use it again
These options are great for how I watch tv literally only for CFB games
I agree that flexibility is the key to getting the channels you want and keeping the price low. I am curious what will happen to CNBC and USA this year since both will be going to the new Versant. USA is important to me for Premier League Soccer because although Peacock shows most matches, USA continues to show some. Fortunately, I picked up another yearly subscription to Peacock a couple of months ago for $24.99.
The price comparison is assuming you get the premium no ads but if you go with YouTube TV it’s going to have commercials so not apples to apples
My Peacock annual sub is up in November and unless I find an awesome annual deal I will be moving on. I was just in it for the shows/movies I’m not paying more for that.
Internet is out of business in my house for watching TV vhs tapes is not out of business in my house i have 900 free watching vhs tapes in my house is not going out of my house internet is not welcome in my house
| get off get rid of a Paramount+ NFL games, NBA games get rid of Paramount+ and HBO Max
i only want two channels…bravo and tlc…whats the best option…
I would be interested in something that merged all NFL broadcast networks (Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN) for $40 or so per month, but there is no such bundle. I would have to get YouTube TV but that just seems too pricey.
I’m a sports person, so the new ESPN & Fox one, will cover most of my needs. Get paramount+ with Walmart subscription. Peacock on yearly Black Friday deal. Don’t need all the junk channels.
Those with an OTA antenna have the most options. Local channels might be all they want. Or they can add free apps for movies and shows.
My parents cancelled directv 5 years ago which at the time, cost like $110 a month. But now, they pay for some sketchy streaming service for $25 a month, Hbomax ad supported $10 a month, netflix ad supported $8 a month, Appletv now $13 a month, Disney+ with ads for $10 a month and Amazon prime video with ads $9 a month all of that basically costs $75 a month, but they RARELY use any of them. So they saved like $35 a month, but use none of them, whereas they used to pay $110 a month for directv and use it constantly. I think that’s where most people go wrong, its the quantity not the quality. Too many people pay for streaming services that they never use so even though they "save" money, they’re losing value because they rarely actually use the streaming services that they’re actively paying for. The streaming services themselves aren’t expensive, customers say they are expensive because they got too many of them. Studios were smart enough to know this and that’s why every studio has a streaming service now.
I swear, I’m regretting "cutting the cord." This streaming garbage is becoming way too expensive and really isn’t giving me what I want for the price I want. Not too shocking in the "we want to continue delivering quality content but we have to pay for our 15 homes" financial environment. And for the love of whoever you believe in, can we get a real package that does not include sports?
Question. With YouTube TV can you customize the home screen to get rid of news channels ? Not just the channels themselves but on the home page that makes suggestions ? Ok with the pricing for the most part coming from Direct TV at over $250.00 a month. When everyone switches to app based TV watch all the pricing go crazy.
I wish you could get the ESPN bundle with local ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates. That would satisfy all my needs.
I might get disney plus bundle with Hulu and espn
This why I just stay with Youtube TV, I get all the sports I want and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) too.
I need the ATSC 3.0 DRM crud figured out so I can drop everything and just move to antenna and discs. At the end of the day, it’s all just entertainment. When I meet St. Pete at the pearly gates, I don’t want my only claim to fame to be that I watched every season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
Allow me to tell you guys how underhanded YouTube tv live is. I had YouTube tv live and suspended service back a few months ago. I got an email from YouTube tv that they were "unsuspending" my subscription without notifying me ahead of time. Then they immediately charged me $99 dollars( I had the 4k package as well). I immediately ressuspended my subscription. As far as sports go..I only enjoy college basketball and had planned to unfreeze my subscription in November. I have been enjoying Tubi recently and now I may listen to me favorite college game on local radio and end my subscription to YouTube all together.
cable and satellite companies could offer an a la cart plan but wont cuz their greedy…streaming services could do the same but again wont….eventually all these services will be gone cuz greed will be there downfall…i live in a area were i cant get my local channels through a tv antenna so my only option to watch abc,cbs,fox,and nbc is through a streaming service but im not paying $80+ a mth just for that when im not gonna watch any of the other channels…id have to subcribe to at least 4 streaming to get all those and it still ads up close to $80+ a mth…streaming services was the better choice over cable but not anymore…everyoe keeps raising their prices each yr and some more than once a yr…the only one i like is prime video cuz they offer a discount to people who are on snap or medicaid…paramount plus offers a discount too but the content isnt as good…again have to pay more if u want the ad free which prime was but the owner got greedy and chatges $3 more a mth for ad free…wouldnt be so bad on the ad version if only 1 ad came up before movie or tv show and not 2+ mins of ads during tv show/movie…people on a fixed income have to acct for where each dollar goes cuz it adds up…eh,maybe one day one of these services will offer a national channel only service so people like me can watch the college and nfl games at a low price but i doubt it
Skinny bundle with Direct TV- the ticket for my household. Thanks so much for the info!!
Sling blue sucks but I can’t afford any other option as I can’t get locals over the air,plus,no espn and no cbs for football.terrible what’s happening especially for sports.
I cancelled all streaming and went back to basic cable , I can watch red Sox and all new England sports teams for $50 a month as opposed to paying nesn $30 a month to watch red Sox and all the other streaming apps to watch my local Boston teams
Thanks for all your continued helpful information. But, when comparing the cost of having multiple apps such as HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, etc. to the cost of just YouTube TV, you are not comparing apples to apples. Those apps provide much better video quality with many shows and movies in 4K, better sound with some having Atmos, and having far fewer or no commercials to have to skip (except when watching live broadcasts).
Greedy corporations will be greedy 🤷🏽‍♂
I’ve had YTTV forever but I’m tired of the costs (even thoughi t’s way cheaper than cable). Outside of sports and local networks, I watch like maybe 5 channels or so (if that) on a regular basis. I do like the DVR capability and being able to watch it from any device though.
I see why people do the illegal IPTV stuff tbh.
I’m a fan of my local NFL team and my SEC college football and basketball team, an antenna combined with ESPN unlimited is exactly what I’ve been looking for, I signed up as soon as it launched.