How to watch ESPN Plus on your TV: What is it, what does it cost and what does it include?

UFC on ESPN Plus

You can pay under $11/month to watch live sports and are able to cancel that subscription at any time without penalty. It's that flexibility that is making ESPN+ a favorite option for live sports fans on a budget. (AP Photo/John Locher)AP

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What is ESPN Plus? What does it cost? What does it include? Can you get it on regular cable TV and is it worth the extra money? We hope to answer more than a few of those questions and give readers a better idea of what ESPN+ offers viewers that is worth shelling out the extra cash for a subscription. Signing up for one month is a low-cost way to find out what it’s all about.

What is ESPN Plus? How much does ESPN Plus cost?

ESPN Plus is a sports streaming service available from ESPN, but it isn’t made available through your local cable provider. Cable and satellite packages from companies like Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon, Frontier and DirecTV don’t offer ESPN Plus because the service is a direct-to-consumer platform, which helps keep the cost low.

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 a cable provider login.

As of October 12, 2023, ESPN Plus now costs $10.99/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.

How much does UFC on ESPN+ PPV cost?

If you are looking to watch a UFC pay-per-view live event, those event packages charge an extra fee, which is cheaper if you already have an ESPN+ subscription. Here’s how much it will cost you:

• If you already have an ESPN+ subscription, the price of a UFC PPV event will be $79.99.

• If you don’t have an ESPN+ subscription and just want to watch a UFC PPV event for the cheapest possible price, you can buy one month of access to ESPN+ for $10.99 and then pay the $79.99 charge for the PPV event. The total price in this case would be $90.98.

• If you plan to watch more than one of these UFC PPV events this year and want to save a considerable amount of money on future purchases, your best option would be to purchase an annual ESPN+ subscription as you purchase the UFC PPV event. In this case, you would pay $134.98 for both an annual ESPN+ subscription and the UFC PPV event you are planning to watch, which means you are getting an annual subscription to ESPN+ for just $54.99 instead of paying the regular price of $109.99 for the annual subscription if you purchase it separately.

• For the absolute best value, you can purchase the UFC PPV event along with The Disney Bundle that features access to ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu. In this case, the price of a UFC PPV event and access to all three of those streaming services would be $94.98 in the first month, then $14.99/month after that.

What does ESPN Plus include?

ESPN Plus is great if you like watching a lot of live sports including weekly UFC and other mixed martial arts events, college football, basketball and other sports as well as a bevy of soccer offerings including Itialian 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 whole lot more. Think of it as a sort of 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.

Can I get ESPN Plus on my TV, or is it just on phones on computers?

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 TV
  • Roku
  • Amazon Fire TV
  • Android TV
  • Xbox One or Xbox Series X
  • Playstation 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.

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 $10 to watch the game and still get access to the platform for the rest of the month. Either way, you only had to pay $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.

If you are a mixed martial arts fan, ESPN+ is a must-have streaming service. With a subscription, you get access to every UFC Fight Night event, which are usually hosted weekly with rising stars of the MMA world facing off. For major UFC events, like Conor McGregor fights or division title belt fights, having an annual subscription ($109.99/year) gives you a discount on the pay-per-view cost of each event. Without a subscription, those events usually cost upwards of $85 to purchase. If you already have an ESPN+ subscription, you are able to purchase these big time pay-per-view UFC fight events at a discount, usually about $20 off the list price.

— Tim Brown, The Oregonian/OregonLive | @timfsbrown

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