Live Streaming Sports Offer New Options for Sports Fans

If you have a high speed satellite internet connection, this is a great time to be a sports fan. No matter if they crave football, hockey, baseball, basketball or even soccer, sports fans are no longer limited to only watching what’s on their local television stations, but instead they can choose from dozens of live games on their computer. Even more amazing, many websites offer multiple games for free. What fan wouldn’t be happy with that?

One of the first website’s to offer live streaming sporting events on their website was ESPN.com. Already the leader on live sports on cable television (they recently secured the rights to the college football BCS championship series, becoming the first cable network to broadcast a major championship game), ESPN recently introduced ESPN360.com, a website which broadcast’s full, live sporting events over the internet. ESPN utilizes this technology mostly for college football and basketball games which allows viewers to choose from multiple games to watch throughout the day. Depending on your internet speed the streaming is somewhere between average and good, but you can’t beat the access to multiple football games that the website gives you.

A couple of years ago, CBS made waves in the sports world by offering every single game of the NCAA Basketball playoffs for free live streaming on their CBS Sports website. This service was offered for two reasons: 1) because the opening rounds featured multiple games being played at the same times, people were only able to watch regional games and thus missed around 75% of the other action; and 2) because many games started during work hours, the average fan could now have a way to watch the games from their office computer. The website even offered an emergency “boss” button which brought up a spread sheet if someone were to wander into a workspace during a game.

NFL Sunday Ticket has been a popular television package for Direct TV which offers customers the chance to watch every football game, in or out of market, from their home. Last year, Sunday Ticket branched out into cyber space and now offers subscribers the opportunity to watch live games on their computer or cell phone. This type of mobile technology has also been embraced by other satellite companies which offer soccer, hockey and other live sporting events.

Not to be outdone, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League both recently launched a service which allows subscribers the opportunity to watch games from their computer. While both leagues charge for this service, with the way trends have been going look for both of these leagues to begin to offer live games for free in the coming seasons.