beIN Sports to Offer Streaming of EPL Match to (Some) Cord Cutters

One week from today the final piece of the 2015-16 English Premier League will be decided. A single match between Middlesbrough and Norwich City will kick off at 10 am eastern time on May 25. The winner will advance to arguably the best soccer league in the world, the loser remains in England’s second tier league, the Football League Championship. Unfortunately, despite the high stakes, only a limited number of soccer fans — in particular those with cable subscriptions — outside of the United Kingdom will have access to the game.

Foreign broadcast rights for the Championship here in the United States and Canada fall to beIN Sports. Directly from the beIN website, they offer a free online system called beIN SPORTS CONNECT, allowing users to stream live events to their computers, iOS and Android systems. The downside is there is no standalone option for the service. You have to be in an area with beIN available to you, with a compatible cable provider and then purchase a qualifying cable package.

bein

The good news is Sling TV offers a package for $10.00 per month that includes, among other sports options, beIN Sports. Perhaps this is one of the first times in broadcasting history where cord cutters without a traditional cable package sit in an advantageous position to those with a cable subscription. Despite some channel lineups coming with beIN, the vast majority of cable packages don’t offer beIN until their highest package, or as an add-on at additional cost. In my area in particular, beIN isn’t available for my current provider. A competing cable and internet provider does offer beIN, though it isn’t an included feature — it is available as an add-on for $10.00 with the second and third most expensive packages —  until the highest cost package, coming in at a hefty $91.00 per month. That bill is before taxes and without accounting for internet or installation and activation.

At this point it’s hard to say which is more accurate: that the cord cutting generation is winning or that the old school cable TV model is losing.

(Header image via beIN)





You can catch David spouting off about baseball, soccer, esports and other things by following him on twitter, @davidwiers.

5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
AJ
8 years ago

FuboTV offers OTT streaming of both BeIN and GolTV (in addition to a few club-specific channels) for $7.99/month.

It looks like televised soccer may very well be the first part of the wall to collapse, so to speak.

Robert
8 years ago

David,

The English Championship is a different league than the EPL, so I felt the headline was misleading, It is the “most expensive match in the world” supposedly, so you could have used a headline that highlighted the huge financial stakes..

Also, re: AJ’s comment on FuboTV, the Bundesliga is leaving Gol TV from Fox next season, so you won’t see much of Leverkusen with that package. Perhaps they’ll still have cup matches?

Mike
8 years ago

Agree with Robert – this isn’t an EPL match, but no matter.

Downloaded the Sling TV app from Amazon and sign up for the sports package so you can watch it within the free 7 day trial period.

I can’t say this will work for everyone, but I canceled within trial period back in March. For some reason, nobody chose to turn the feeds off to the app on my Apple TV, iPhone, or iPad. Sling says to check Amazon for my account status and Amazon says I have no active subscriptions. Cool! No bills have hit my credit card. So, unless I’ve inadvertently alerted the authorities, I’ll be streaming this match.

sean
8 years ago

the EPL is NOT available in the USA via beIN sports.