How to watch college football with ESPN Plus; Is it a TV channel? What is it, what does it cost and include?

Harvard Football

It's college football season! If you want to be in the game with small college football and get many games that won't appear on national broadcasts, ESPN+ is a cheap sports streaming services that has a slew of college football, soccer and other live sports for under $7 a month. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)AP

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UPDATE: Here is our updated guide for how to watch college football on ESPN+ for the 2023 season. Prices for the service have increased slightly, but ESPN Plus now also offers a few more sports and leagues fans can watch as a result.

So many small college, mid-major and some big-name non-conference football games will be live streamed on ESPN Plus this college football season, ESPN’s à la carte sports streaming service. Whether you are a fan looking to watch one game being broadcast on the platform, or are looking to follow your small college team who will have many of their games on ESPN Plus this season, Now, you may have questions about what the service is, what channel you can find it on, what it costs and what a subscription to ESPN+ includes and whether or not is is worth adding to your list of streaming services.

We hope to answer all of those questions for college football fans and give readers a better idea of what ESPN+ offers viewers that is worth shelling out the extra cash for a subscription. Whether you’re a football fanatic looking to supplement your current local and national sports cable offerings, or just a casual fan that needs help watching that one game or event you can’t miss, ESPN+ has a ton to offer at a very fair price.

What is ESPN Plus and why should college football fans sign up?

ESPN Plus is a live sports streaming service available from ESPN, but it isn’t made available through your local cable provider. ESPN Plus is NOT a TV channel and is not available on cable and satellite packages from companies like Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon, Frontier and DirecTV. ESPN Plus is not included on those services because the service is a direct-to-consumer platform, which helps keep the cost low and available to everyone despite their location. Here’s a look at the ESPN+ college football broadcast schedule for Week 3 and Week 4 of the 2023 college football season as an example of the kind of teams you’ll see each week.

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 cable, satellite or a live TV streaming service provider login.

What else comes with ESPN Plus access? What sports does it include?

ESPN Plus is great if you like watching a lot of live college sports, which includes smaller events like volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, soccer and more. But that’s not all they offer. What makes ESPN Plus so worth the affordable price tag is that they offer so much outside of that. ESPN Plus offers weekly UFC and other mixed martial arts events as well as a bevy of professional soccer offerings including Italian 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 lot more. ESPN Plus is essentially an 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.

How much does ESPN Plus cost?

ESPN Plus 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 $10 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.

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.

Bottom line: 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 $11 to watch the game and still get access to the platform for the rest of the month until your login expires. Either way, you only had to pay $11 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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