Is FuboTV the best streaming service for sports?

 

Sports fans typically have the most difficult time cutting the cord. They have to juggle local and regional sports networks, require a higher than average stream quality, and have to deal with location based blackouts. However, the rise of cord cutting has started to make streaming sports significantly easier. FuboTV markets themselves to be the best streaming service for sports, but is that actually true? We’ll explain the service and compare it to some of the top competitors so you know if it’s the right choice for you.

FuboTV Packages

Fubo Premier

FuboTV has three core packages to choose from. The main package is called Fubo Premier and costs $44.99 a month. However, the service does come with a free trial and offers a 55% discount on the first month (down to $19.99). It comes with over 75 channels and includes most of the major sports networks. The image below shows the 79 available channels at our Boston location. You can view the current channel lineup for your location at fubo.tv.

 

 

For a streaming service directed at sports fans, it’s quite odd that FuboTV doesn’t include ESPN. You’d think with so many other ways to watch ESPN without cable, FuboTV would have the option. Without ESPN, FuboTV subscribers will have to find other ways to watch Monday Night Football and plenty of college football games they’ll otherwise miss. Fubo also excludes TNT and TBS; two of the major ways to watch basketball and some baseball without cable.

 

 

On the other hand, not including TNT, TBS, and ESPN allows FuboTV to include some stations in their main package that other services offer at a reduced costs. Channels like BeIN Sports and the NFL Network combined with regional sports networks like NESN can make fuboTV the cheapest option for some sports fans.

Although marketed towards sports fans, let’s not discount Fubo’s non-sports related offerings. With many popular channels like HGTV, A&E, and National Geographic, FuboTV has channels for the entire family. They also offer local news stations in quite a lot of locations, but there is a chance that you won’t be able to pick up CBS, Fox, or NBC. It’s important to note that PBS and CNN are not included in Fubo’s channel lineup regardless of location.

 

 

If non-sports channels are all you’re looking for, Fubo isn’t normally the cheapest option. Sling TV, DirecTV Now, and PlayStation Vue all offer more choices for disabling cable without an emphasis on sports. Combined with the sports offerings though, FuboTV can compete in cost with the best of them.

Addon Packages

In addition to the main Fubo Premier package, Fubo offers are a long list of add-on channels. These packages include the International Sports Plus package that offers Fox Soccer Plus, Showtime, Adventure Plus, and plenty of others to cater to your specific needs. They also have two smaller packages that are technically core packages. They have far less channels than the Premier package, but only cost $17.99 or $19.99 a month. Fubo Latino and Fubo Portuguese have a small channel selection, but there are some combination of channels that make these smaller packages with an add-on option or two the best choice to fit your needs.

Fubo Latino Package

 

Fubo Portuguese Package

International Sports Plus

One of the add-on packages that we find draws the most people to FuboTV is their International Sports Plus package. Fubo has a huge following in the soccer (fútbol) world since it supports most of the major soccer channels for a fair price.

 

 

Fubo covers the following leagues and events:

• Brasileirão Série A
• Bundesliga
• CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers
• CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers
• FA Cup
• FIFA World Cup
• La Liga
• League Cup
• Ligue 1
• MLS
• NASL
• NWSL
• Premier League
• Primeira Liga
• Scottish Premiership
• UEFA Champions League
• UEFA Europa League
• UEFA World Cup qualifiers

 

 

 

To see a full list of Fubo’s other add-on packages, check out their homepage.

The Hardware

Fubo DVR

DVR isn’t typically the most requested feature for sports fanatics, but that doesn’t stop Fubo from offering it for free. It can be quite useful if you’re following something like the Premier League and games are played at odd times for your location.

Included in your subscription is cloud DVR capabilities with a 30 hour cap on recording time. 30 hours is a bit less than what some other services offer, but you can always upgrade it if you want. The upgrade costs $10 a month and will give you 16 times the storage space of the free DVR for a total of 500 hours.

It would be nice if Fubo would offer something in the middle of both the cost and storage space for their current DVR options. The jump from 30 to 500 hours is a bit excessive and paying $5 a month for something like 250-300 hours of recorded shows would be perfect. If you’re not an over-zealous recorder of shows and regularly delete old recordings, the 30 hours of storage should be more than enough and you can’t really beat the cost (free). You also don’t have a time limit for how long your DVR footage is saved and it will remain there indefinitely or until it’s manually deleted.

Lookback

Fubo also has a pretty cool playback feature for most of their channels. It’s called “Lookback” and allows you to view a sporting or entertainment event that happened up to 72 hours ago. It’s great if you missed a game or forgot something like the Oscars was on. All you have to do is click through the calendar and find the original air date and select Lookback. It’s slightly disappointing that you can’t record Lookback footage onto the cloud DVR, but hopefully that’s a feature they’ll add in the future.

Streaming

FuboTV is also limited on the amount of simultaneous streams you can run at once. Currently, they only support two streams at the same time. While obviously better than only one, nothing is worse than not being able to watch the game because your kids are watching the Food Network and your wife is watching the news. If you only plan on watching Fubo through 2 TVs at once it won’t be a problem, but if you’re a 3 TV household then you might run into some issues.

4K streaming isn’t supported by Fubo yet. If you just went out and bought a nice expensive 4K TV, you won’t be able to watch the game to it’s fullest potential with Fubo. They might release 4K support in the future, but at that point we might have 8K capable TVs!

Fubo TV Review Summary

Pros:

• Premium sports channels included or offered at reasonable prices
• Free cloud DVR storage
• Great local network support
• 72 hour “Lookback” for games and events

Cons:

• No ESPN
• No PBS, CNN, TBS, TNT
• No 4K Support
• Only 2 simultaneous streams

Overall, FuboTV is a great streaming service that is comparable to most of its competitors. It’s almost impossible to say if one service is strictly better than another because the channel line ups and user channel preferences are so different. That said, FuboTV is hands down the best service to get multiple “premium” channels like Fox Soccer Plus and PAC-12 at the same time. If you’re a sports fanatic (especially Soccer) and don’t mind missing out on ESPN, FuboTV is a fantastic option.