Just a decade in the past, should you have been a Yankees fan in New York, you simply wanted a cable subscription to observe each regular-season recreation and the playoffs.
Now, in 2026, it might require navigating 10 networks, 5 (or extra) subscriptions and approaching a thousand {dollars} to see all of the workforce’s video games if it goes deep into October.
It is a chief example of the angst of the trendy sports activities fan.
Where are my workforce’s video games on? Do I’ve that service? And how a lot does it value?
The Yankees open the 2026 MLB common season tonight with their recreation solely out there on Netflix. The confusion and expense are byproducts of leagues’ wishes to extend or keep their tv revenues in a scattered media atmosphere more and more targeted on streaming.
The NFL produced 83 of the highest 100 Nielsen exhibits in 2025. It aired video games on Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN, ABC, Amazon Prime Video, NFL Network, YouTube and Netflix. The NFL at the moment rakes in round $11 billion per yr for its video games, however it plans to ask its companions (and probably new ones) for billions extra.
The networks might very nicely cross on the added prices to shoppers, together with the “how to watch” questions. The NFL is not alone in in search of essentially the most cash, as all leagues are attempting to maximise their rights charges, however their disparate options have created an ecosystem that more and more incenses followers.
When requested in regards to the present sports activities TV landscape, practically 90 p.c of followers responded that they have been not less than “somewhat” annoyed, in response to the latest report from Hub Entertainment, a agency that analyzes client views.
None aside from Apple’s lead TV government, senior vp of companies Eddy Cue, weighed in.
“We’ve gone backwards,” Cue mentioned at Motorsport Network’s Autosport Business Exchange. “You used to buy one subscription, your cable subscription, and you got pretty much everything they had. Now, there’s so many different subscriptions, so I think that needs to be fixed.”
Recently, FCC chairman Brendan Carr chimed in on social media.
“Watching your favorite team play isn’t as easy these (days,)” he tweeted as half of an announcement asking for public remark.
This week’s begin to the brand new baseball season supplies a stark illustration. Let’s return to the standard Yankees fan in New York, who simply desires to observe all of the workforce’s regular-season video games:
In all, a Yankees fan will want entry to eight networks for the complete 162-game slate, plus probably two extra if the Yankees make the playoffs.
“We would love to have all the games on YES and Amazon,” Yankees president and YES chairman Randy Levine mentioned, citing the house of the workforce’s regional companions, which can have entry to round 87 p.c of the membership’s regular-season video games. “We are part of MLB and they are allowed to place games on their national platforms. I feel bad for fans who have trouble finding the games and have to pay for additional subscriptions to watch the games.”
Here are the related prices — practically $800 for the season — utilizing the minimal subscription prices for accessing video games. For example, just one month of Netflix (not 9 months, like cable) is required to observe the season opener. Let’s additionally assume the standard Yankees fan may wish to tune in for different huge, nationally televised baseball video games or the complete playoffs (and Yankees followers outdoors of the higher New York area will want extra subscription-only entry factors — like MLB.television — that aren’t mirrored under).
For all that cash spent on dwell sports activities, viewers get a heap of frustration: Not figuring out the place to seek out their video games every day; not having fun with their non-local broadcasters; and having to handle all these recurring payments, typically with value will increase seemingly out of nowhere. Older followers typically battle with the know-how. Nearly everybody bears the added prices.
As Levine mentioned, the networks, leagues and new platforms perceive the issue. The problem is that everybody desires to dominate the post-cable, direct-to-consumer landscape. It is a multitude of frustration that must be untangled.
Clubhouse reporter Meredith Marakovits can be a well-known face for Yankees followers subscribing to YES Network. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
Several main platforms are attempting to be the subsequent residence of sports activities viewing, as cable and satellite tv for pc reimagine themselves to compete with the rising dominant gamers from Amazon to YouTube.
“I’m very optimistic that over the next several years, we should be able to deliver a much more uniform experience,” mentioned Christian Oestlien, YouTube’s vp of subscription merchandise.
YouTube TV, the corporate’s cable-like digital service, simply launched a sports-only bundle. For $65 per thirty days, it gives most nationwide programming, together with all of ESPN, Fox, NBC, CBS and TNT. But it nonetheless lacks Prime Video, Apple, Netflix or the bulk of regional sports activities networks.
Prime Video, with its subscriptions characteristic, is attempting to bundle as many paid networks as doable collectively for a one-stop viewing expertise.
“That is what Prime Video is endeavoring to solve,” mentioned Amazon’s head of sports activities partnerships, Charlie Neiman, whose firm launched its technique a decade in the past.
From Roku to conventional cable companies, like Spectrum and Comcast, everybody is attempting to navigate the angst felt from each nook of sports activities fandom, whereas nonetheless attempting to maximise their very own revenue margins.
Despite the provision of nearly each community as an “a la carte” subscription providing, it nonetheless is sensible for a typical fan to have primary cable or a streaming comparable (YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, Fubo, and so forth.) that gives entry to the fundamental broadcast and cable networks that present so many dwell sports activities. For this illustration, we picked YouTube TV and its new “sports”-only bundle, together with outstanding streaming companies that supply near-year-round dwell sports activities choices.
How did we get right here? Was the cable bundle a greater system? And are we on the verge of The Great Rebundling, the place followers will as soon as once more be capable to go to 1 place and discover all their sports activities?
Beginning within the Nineteen Seventies, the cable bundle would evolve into most likely essentially the most worthwhile enterprise mannequin in sports activities media historical past: Recurring income, seemingly in perpetuity, with a digital monopoly and the flexibility to extend costs with out a lot recourse from shoppers.
Through the a long time, cable grew to become centered round ESPN, its 24-7 portfolio of video games and exhibits, and its leverage over cable suppliers, who handed on these elevated prices to followers. The community peaked in additional than 100 million properties by 2011, leading to billions of {dollars} in funds from cable distributors — whether or not shoppers have been watching ESPN or not. Plus, ESPN made billions extra in promoting income. Combined with ESPN, the cable bundle supplied entry to broadcast networks and sports-centric cable shops, like TNT Sports and Fox Sports. Plus, there was entry to regional sports activities networks for native MLB, NBA and NHL video games.
While the cable corporations have been notoriously a ache to take care of as a person client, for round $60 per thirty days for “expanded basic cable,” you possibly can watch all of your favourite groups’ nationwide and native video games and flip your channels with ease.
The digital earthquake via conventional media has truly taken its time wreaking havoc on dwell sports activities, in comparison with what it has completed to different conventional media like music, radio and newspapers.
Netflix grew to become ubiquitous as a subscription product, whereas YouTube grew to become the go-to platform for youthful (after which more and more older) viewing habits. That left dwell sports activities, led by ESPN and Fox, and information as the primary drivers holding individuals on primary cable.
To compete with Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube and the menace to the cable bundles, the standard gamers began their very own streaming companies, as older subscribers minimize the twine and youthful ones by no means even considered signing up for cable TV.
In 2020, NBC (with Peacock) and CBS (with Paramount+) each put their NFL video games on their streaming companies, whereas sustaining them on broadcast TV. In addition, Peacock and a facet service for ESPN, ESPN+, positioned unique NFL video games simply on these platforms. The video games have been offered as “over the top,” that means bypassing broadcast and cable.
“The acceleration of sports over the top has led to a lot more sports fans’ strife than we were expecting,” mentioned Robert Fishman, a senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, a number one unbiased fairness analysis writer.
Plainly, it made it so there was no clear, uniform fan expertise. By 2025, ESPN had dropped to 58.7 million properties, in response to Nielsen. It nonetheless owns the perfect sports activities rights portfolio, however has lots of competitors.
Of the streamers, Prime Video has had essentially the most aggressive rights-acquisition plan because it launched in 2018 and has now acquired main rights to the NFL, the NBA, some native Yankees video games and an enormous array of worldwide occasions. It has been joined by Apple TV, which has offers with MLB, MLS and F1. Netflix has added Christmas Day NFL video games, three MLB occasions (Opening Day, Home Run Derby and the “Field of Dreams” recreation) this season and the 2031 Women’s World Cup. YouTube has NFL Sunday Ticket, which permits followers to view all out-of-market Sunday video games, and streamed its first regular-season NFL recreation in September.
Ian Eagle and Stan Van Gundy are half of Amazon Prime’s NBA protection. (Photo by Al Bello / Getty Images)
The magnificence of at the moment is that you would be able to nearly see any recreation, anyplace, at any time on the planet. And you may have all of it at a value. This all-you-can-eat buffet is out there in practically each sport, the place a fan can have a totally full plate or simply decide on the menu.
If you wish to watch each Sunday NFL recreation, it will possibly value anyplace from $400 to $500 per season with YouTube’s Sunday Ticket. If you aren’t a diehard fan or don’t wish to spend that sort of severe dough, 87 p.c of NFL video games are on broadcast TV (Fox, CBS, NBC & ABC), that means, with a easy low cost antenna in your TV, a fan wouldn’t should pay one greenback. An area fan, say a Cheesehead in Milwaukee, can watch each NFL recreation with out cost, as ESPN and Prime Video video games are required by the NFL to be on native broadcast TV.
Still, there is fixed frustration for followers. Not everybody pays for Prime Video and Netflix, whereas others have minimize the twine and don’t have cable.
MLB’s league-wide offers and the recognition of the Yankees clarify why the workforce is on so typically on completely different platforms. While the Yankees, with YES, and the Dodgers, with Spectrum SportsWeb LA, have profitable regional cable offers, smaller market networks are in disarray. MLB hopes to have a full native streaming service with all its groups by the top of the last decade that might put an finish to blackouts.
The NBA had the same regional problem, however in its new 11-year, $76 billion TV offers, it took video games from native networks and gave them to 3 nationwide platforms, remaining with ABC/ESPN whereas including NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime Video. To see all of the New York Knicks’ video games, followers want 4 subscriptions.
One ongoing frustration stays switching out and in of apps. Prime Video and YouTube have been leaders in modernizing the clicker. It is very simple to have 4 video games on directly on their companies and to develop one near-instantly to take up the complete display. Their limitations are that you just don’t have all of the video games in a single place.
This technical maze is among the many challenges that platforms like YouTube, Amazon Prime Channels, Roku and Spectrum are attempting to resolve.
YouTubeTV – which is the sister, cable-like companion to the free YouTube – has essentially the most momentum within the trade. Despite launching in 2017, it has greater than 10 million subscribers. That places it on a trajectory to quickly probably surpass Spectrum and Comcast, that are within the 12 million subscriber vary, as essentially the most dominant cable-like bundle. When it combines with the creator-based, principally free service of YouTube, it has a vastly larger viewers than some other platform.
The firm says viewers consumed 40 billion hours of sports activities on its service in 2025. While it could by no means embody the stock of Netflix, Apple TV or Prime Video, YouTube is trying to turn out to be the one-stop store for the typical fan with its $65 per thirty days sports-only bundle.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean we will be the party that is licensing all of the rights,” mentioned Oestlien, the VP of subscription merchandise. “Our league partners are very cognizant of how fragmented the market has become. How hard it is to actually figure out where a game is going to be on any particular day.”
“Apple TV+” rebranded to “Apple TV,” however its “Friday Night Baseball” continues in 2026. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Oestlien and his workforce spend lots of time attempting to make it simpler to seek out the content material. Later this yr, YouTube TV will combine ESPN Unlimited into its primary subscription providing, giving followers that many extra video games to observe in a single interface.
Since starting somewhat greater than a decade in the past, Amazon Prime Video has essentially the most sturdy channel retailer, the place you may dwell in its app and have entry to navigate an array (if not all) of the streaming apps.
“We identified that fragmentation and discovery and payment management and these types of things were potential issues and headwinds for customers,” Neiman mentioned. “They wanted one place where they could go to consume most of their content. That was the thesis back then. If we fast-forward to now, everything has borne out tenfold.”
Amazon has created a bundle-like system {that a} buyer can construct on their very own inside Prime Video. While it has companies like Fox, Peacock, Paramount Plus and NBA League Pass, it does not have ESPN Unlimited or Netflix.
Prime Video has most likely solved the “re-bundle” drawback higher to date than anybody digitally, however nonetheless not absolutely. Disney, for one, doesn’t need Amazon to personal the connection with its clients. (Amazon doesn’t launch numbers for what number of subscriptions it has offered in its service.)
Meanwhile, cable corporations like Spectrum have discovered a strategy to entice shoppers by including to their conventional bundle with ESPN Unlimited, Fox One, HBO Max, Paramount+ and extra, making a slight uptick in Spectrum’s subscriber numbers and bucking what had been a steep pattern downward.
It was by no means good, however it has gotten extra complicated and costly for followers. Maybe sooner or later we will return to the long run, with one payment for all of the video games. They might name the system… primary cable.