I live in Colorado Springs and generally make a few Rapids home matches a season but watch most home and road matches on TV. I'm evaluating cutting off our DirecTV subscription. Is there a way to watch Rapids matches live without having cable or satellite TV?
Live I'm not sure about. I stream my TV via Roku. I have the ESPN+ app ($4/month) that streams all MLS & USL matches. Most of the time the Rapids live matches are blacked out but within an hour or so of its conclusion the stream is made available for replay. If I don't attend the match this is how I watch the Rapids. It's also how I watch the Switchbacks.
I don't know of any option to watch live without wading into at least one gray area - even paying for ESPN+. (I do recommend getting ESPN+). There's no commitment - so if you're just interested the the domestic leagues you can cancel during the off season. DirecTV used to offer account holds - for up to 6 consecutive months. I don't know if they still have that option. Had to call and speak to a rep. During the hold your account stays open and you get to keep any leased equipment. It's how our family got away. After 4 months we decided we didn't miss it - so we rang them back and cancelled.
"Legally" no, not live at least. The only options for non-nationally televised Rapids games is to have a cable/satellite contract. You could use a VPN to try to get around the ESPN+ blackout but they tend to frown on that and often change their interface to try to block people doing that (with mixed results).
Genuinely curious: What law does VPN use for circumventing geoblocking break?* It's a TOS violation for sure, but that's civil not criminal. *This statement is not intended to condone VPN use to circumvent geoblocking.
Thus the “legally” in quotes, because I couldn’t come up with a better word at that moment to describe TOS violations. Plus it also covered other methods, that would be illegal, of acquiring the signal without a contract.
Is this true? Within an hour or a few hours of the conclusion of a Rapids game on ESPN+ you can watch the replay? Can the scores be suppressed? This is great news if true.
Last season ESPN+ (or whoever controlled the feed) was pretty consistent in the 1-3 hour window for full matches. You could see the highlights within minutes of its conclusion. The annoying part....you could see the score before clicking the match. However, I suspect that will change as ESPN+ has changed the "replay" function with no scores visible for the English Championship, Dutch Eredivisie, Serie A, etc. Very straightforward.
Oh sure, make me read through the DMCA instead of doing it for me! I just can't imagine that our legislative branch was informed enough to put that scenario in there, but I've been having problems sleeping lately so some dry reading might be in order.
I did, too! Close eyes, point, click and shoot. 90% of the time I still failed. Very Badji-esque. Strike that.....Very Rapids-eqsue.
It's easy to watch a Rapids match on ESPN+ without knowing the score. Wait at least 24 hours after the match ends. Nobody will be talking about the match anywhere - at work, on the street, around town. There's zero danger of accidentally hearing the score. Log in to ESPN+. The match won't be featured on the visible games. Nobody else would want to see it anyway. Use the sidebar for "other matches" and click on the Rapids match. The scores aren't visible on the irrelevant / unimportant / why bother sidebar matches because nobody cares about them anyway.