I am a Spectrum customer and have kept it primarily for the Lakers, Galaxy and Pac12 network. I am getting fed up with the continuing rate increases and am looking at dropping tv service at a minimum. I can pretty much replace them with YouTube TV, but this leaves a big hole for the Lakers and Galaxy. Has anyone in southern California gone this route? Does ESPN+ provide more than the USL games? Is there a legal streaming solution that is not subject to blackouts or time delays since Spectrum holds the local rights for games that are not broadcast nationally? Is there a solution that also covers the Lakers and/or the Pac12 network? Finally, Frontier has wired my condo complex with Fiber and the claim to be about $60 cheaper than Spectrum for "better" service. Does anyone currently use them and if so would you recommend them?
I want to cut the cord so bad but this Galaxy obsession is holding me back. My understanding is ESPN+ won’t show you Galaxy games live but they’ll show it 24 hours later or something. I’m thinking of just putting off Twitter and these boards and sucking it up. ESPN+ is worth the $5. Italian league and Dutch league alone make it worthwhile.
Spectrum and Direct TV (the dish version - not the internet version) are the only places that carry Spectrum Sports. ESPN+ blacks out national games and your local games for 24 to 48 hours.... Galaxy are why Spectrum gets my money.
I've been a cord-cutter for years. The options for watching the Galaxy, particularly live, are not great. And then, just when I get used to watching Galaxy the day after, if the game runs on one of the other national networks, you can't see it on ESPN+ later. They don't make it easy.
This is why I groan everytime I hear a league or a team espouse how much they care and appreciate the fans and that everything they do is for the fans. Please...teams and the league don't do crap for the fans and all they care is about the fans' $....*mic drop*
I live in Austin, TX so I have ESPN+. I absolutely love it. I am a Villa fan too, and half of our games are on ESPN+ which is always nice. Plus they show random hockey games, and lots of random soccer leagues. For me, it's a great investment for only $5.
Yes, it is intentionally designed to not let you see your local market team, so as to not steal from the local tv deal...
Cut the cord! I use Sling tv and a digital antenna. Cut my bill by over $100 month instantly. It's not as easy as Spectrum, but I don't miss anything about my old cable set up. You might not get every Galaxy game, but you will get a lot. It's worth it.
Actually you would miss at least 18 MLS games plus the open games and early playoff games, also the Laker games on SSN. Frontier 's FIOS seems like a good alternative.
This has been my experience too . . . I cord-cut in 2008, and had bought the MLS subscription every year thereafter, through all the format changes and name changes, and was able to see more Galaxy games than I now can with ESPN+. The access to live games is limited, the access to replays is inconsistent . . . AND it seems like the replays are only hot for a couple weeks then disappear (?) . . . and last year there was no condensed game option . . . condensed game was a GREAT tool for watching a lot more games in replay . . . I mean I like MLS, but find it tough to sit through full-game replays of Orlando City - Revolution or Minnesota - Chicago games that end scoreless (!)
Yes, the switch from MLS Live to ESPN+ was a disaster and it resulted in me watching A LOT LESS MLS....
The condensed games DID (hopefully continuing) appear (for free actually) on the MLSsoccer App last year. The problem was that in order to find them you often would get spoiled on the result of the match somewhere else in their (horribly designed) app. After a while I got pretty good at navigating to them with my eyes crossed so as to not spoil anything. It would be nice if they did a better job of making those available in a way that allows you to enjoy them.
Nevermind. Just read up on VPNs. Looks like I might do that. Seems Nord is the best, anyone use TunnelBear (the free version)? I'm wondering how much slower that is.
I've tried VPN's and used TunnelBear for awhile. It stopped working for MLS Live, and I haven't been able to make it work for ESPN+ either. Maybe I'll try again fresh this year. Free version TunnelBear, once you get the app going and the game going, make sure you turn off the VPN. Otherwise you will run out of your free MB's pretty fast. In my experience the speed was fine. I ended up paying for TunnelBear for awhile, until I couldn't get the games anymore.
Isn't there an issue with billing address and VPN? For example if your billing address for a service is in Torrance but the VPN is using an Ohio UP address that they still will black you out. I have read that to make it work, you need an out of area address.
How do they get your billing address? Seems that's the whole point of VPN's. Or do you mean the billing address for ESPN+? If you go "out of town", you should be able to get the service, theoretically.
I mean the ESPN+ (or any service that has location restrictions like MLB). I read on a cord cutting site that services like MLB have taken steps like using the billing address to deny service.
I exchanged posts with the author of the article. He claimed to have gotten around the problem by using the address of his vacation home which was not in the service area for the Giants. Obviously having two residences is not something most of us have. A more common example, my daughter taught English for a year in Suwon Korea. She used VPN to get a US ip address and then used our Netflix account.