The costs to watch all the European, North American, South American and international soccer leagues piles up.
Many different cable companies and streaming services are now available with different media rights. Soccer fans get confused with the time-consuming hassle finding the cheapest way to watch the beautiful game. This is even more complicated when fans want to watch multiple leagues from around the globe. As different streaming services charge different fees, let’s find out which major leagues are the cheapest here in the States.
North American leagues cost more
Interestingly enough, the costs to watch North American soccer leagues lead the ‘most-expensive’ list for viewers in the United States. Major League Soccer and Liga MX both cost significantly more money to watch than the popular European leagues. This is mostly due to the fact that these two leagues have complicated television rights in the United States.
Multiple television or streaming companies currently own the rights to broadcast MLS and Liga MX games. This means that if you want to catch all, or at least most, of the season’s schedule on TV, you must subscribe to different services. For example, MLS matches air on ESPN, ESPN2, FOX, FS1, and ESPN+.
Liga MX is even more complicated. Each club negotiates their television rights. Some clubs provide exclusive access to broadcasters. For instance, FOX Deportes and FOX Sports share the rights with ESPN Deportes and ESPN+ for home games featuring Monterrey, Santos Laguna and Club Tijuana. Simultaneously, Telemundo Deportes have the English-language and Spanish-language rights to Chivas home games.
READ MORE: How to watch Liga MX on US TV.
As we will see in a minute, many other leagues can be found on one singular streaming service.
Paramount+, ESPN+ and others
As far as the major leagues are concerned, Paramount+ currently offers the best monthly price for Americans. Italy’s Serie A and the National Women’s Soccer League are both available for just $4.99 per month. Along with these two leagues, Paramount+ also offers exclusive access to many other soccer competitions.
The main draws of those are the UEFA competitions. The UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League are exclusive to Paramount+ in the United States. While these are not the standard ‘leagues’ like the Premier League or Serie A, these are major competitions followed by millions worldwide.
Although the table below shows the cheapest ways to watch each soccer league, there are other streaming options as well. For instance, Sling Blue is the cheapest way to gain access to the USA Network for many Premier League matches, but other services offer more total channels. FuboTV currently offers more than double of the channels than Sling; however, this streaming service is $15-$30 more expensive each month (depending on which plan you choose).
Along with different streaming service options, many of these companies also offer a cheaper rate if you pay by the year. ESPN+ is currently $6.99 per month or $69.99 annually. Paying by the year would save subscribers nearly $14 per year. Peacock’s Premium version is $4.99 per month or $49.99 annually. For comparison reasons we will show just the monthly options below.
Costs to watch soccer leagues
| League | Streaming Service | Total Cost (per month) |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League | Sling Blue/Peacock Premium | $39.99 |
| LaLiga | ESPN+ | $6.99 |
| Serie A | Paramount+ | $4.99 |
| Bundesliga | ESPN+ | $6.99 |
| Ligue 1 | Fanatiz | $7.99 |
| Championship | ESPN+ | $6.99 |
| MLS | Sling Orange and Blue/ESPN+ | $56.99 |
| Liga MX | fuboTV | $69.99 |
| NWSL | Paramount+/Twitch | $4.99 |
200+ Channels With Sports & News
- Starting price: $33/mo. for fubo Latino Package
- Watch Premier League, World Cup, Euro 2024 & more
Live & On Demand TV Streaming
- Price: $35/mo. for Sling Blue
- Watch Premier League, World Cup & MLS
Many Sports & ESPN Originals
- Price: $9.99/mo. (or get ESPN+, Hulu & Disney+ for $13.99/mo.)
- Features Bundesliga, LaLiga, Championship, & more
2,000+ soccer games per year
- Price: $4.99/mo
- Features Champions League, Serie A, Europa League & NWSL
175 Premier League Games & PL TV
- Starting price: $4.99/mo. for Peacock Premium
- Watch 175 exclusive EPL games per season
110+ channels, live & on-demand
- Price: $59.95/mo. for Plus Package
- Includes FOX, FS1, ESPN, TUDN & more
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dave
March 19, 2022 at 11:40 am
Interesting summary. Stand-alone access to all games in European leagues ex-EPL is generally very affordable. Several commenters raise points that resonate:
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* Per @KW and @Yespage, there is a lot of free OTA soccer if you live near a major metro. For example, Univision/UniMas and Telemundo show 3-4 Liga MX games each week as well as a lot of UCL/UEL and WCQ, some MLS, etc. CBS shows some NWSL and Champions League knockouts. NBC airs a marquee EPL game most weeks. Etc.
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* Per @greg and @Michael F, the marginal cost of watching a league depends on sunk costs for other viewing interests in the household. Many general sports fans have ESPN+ and a cable-like package that includes USA, FS1, ESPN, etc. Marginal cost may be Paramount+ and/or Peacock Premium.
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* Thanks to @Ra for the reminder about auto-subscriptions. I made a note to check my credit card statement to see what I am paying for that I no longer use.
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* Not sure I fully agree with the prices. NWSL has a few games exclusively on CBSSN. That is an expensive niche channel if the criteria is “access 100% of games”. Alternately, Liga MX is covered well by fubo Latino (TUDN, ESPND, FOXD) provided you have Telemundo OTA for Chivas and are OK missing the very occasional game exclusively on FS2/ESPN+.
NaBUru38
March 18, 2022 at 12:13 pm
Let’s see what happens with the Liga MX and the new Vix streaming service.
Yespage
March 17, 2022 at 12:50 pm
Technically, people can watch the EPL for free. Just the games live on NBC over the air, but that is still free. No one else offers that. Additionally, Peacock provides access to live EPL and replays for $5 a month. So Peacock and NBC provide coverage for $5. You want all coverage, you’ll need to step up with Sat/Cable or IPTV.
Michael F
March 19, 2022 at 11:02 am
@Yespage. Exactly. There is that too that you mentioned. You want some of it, it is readily accessible live for everyone at a very reasonable price or free. You want all of it, you pay $5 a month with a few matches on 24 hr delay and the rest live. You can’t for those few on 24 hr delay on demand, subscribe to a cable like service.
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These soccer fans that demand it all on stream live along with all the other hundreds and hundreds of matches from other leagues – feel they are entitled for some reason. Demands for entitlement usually come from those who are totally unrealistic or cheap or both.
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I wonder how much soccer one can possibly consume in a weekend, when they demand all it on the cheap. Sure we would all love it that way. Welcome to the real world, where one always has something to complain about.
Mercator
March 15, 2022 at 6:07 pm
Great article and this perfectly illustrates my issue with NBC and the Premier League. They are massively overcharging fans by continuing to require cable to watch a good number of the games. Every other European league is significantly cheaper. It’s made worse by the fact that NBC doesn’t have the FA Cup or League Cup, so you have to pay for yet another service to really watch all the games of an EPL team. NBC also offers basically nothing additional for football fans for all that additional cost – they have no other football leagues! I’ve said this multiple times since day 1 NBC is absolutely ripping people off and this is for a league they can’t even be bothered to do a proper pre-post game show for anymore.
I would argue MLS is even more overpriced at the moment when you factor in the RSNs required to watch your home team in many markets. Color me shocked why their ratings are low. It’s not wonder, they demand far to much, particularly when you can get leagues like La Liga or Seria A at a fraction of the price. Spend 5 bucks, use a VPN or Hulu work around for in market games, and you can get every game except the national ones so you only miss a few games from you term per year. This is far better value than paying whatever MLS is asking.
Liga MX in english is an incredibly niche product. So niche its really only on Fubo which again causes the cost to skyrocket. You can pencil in the same price for the Euros/Nations league now. Again, makes it apparent just how disastrous it is for Fubo to win these exclusive rights deals. ESPN+ and Paramount+ really show their value though. If cost constrained these would be the last two services I cut.
greg
March 16, 2022 at 12:38 pm
Your take makes sense if one assumes that the only thing someone wants out of a cable/streaming package is EPL. If that’s you, fine…but that makes you more a minority among TV viewers, otherwise cable would have died already & Fubo/Sling.YouTube TV etc wouldn’t have made market sense.
Similarly the analysis only makes sense if you view it thru the prism of “I only want to watch these 1 or more leagues”.
But many households, whether single-viewer or family, might want more than just EPL. So the costs presented here aren’t amortized out over everything the household wants to view.
A better way to think of it is “based on everything I/we want to want to watch in a given time period, what service(s) do I/we need?” So you’d need to add up all the cost and the time spent watching any tv on all services that include the leagues you want. Then divide up the cost by the time spent watching the league. That is your net monthly cost for that league. You’d probably want to have a rolling average to account for those months where you’re not watching as much, the leagues or competitions aren’t active, there’s other things on those services you’re watching (limited run series, etc).
But this raw calculation doesn’t really tell the cost story.
Michael F
March 18, 2022 at 11:46 pm
@greg excellent response to a complaint we’ve heard a thousand times on this site. There is definitely more to the story of entertainment viewing habits and consumption by the consumer, that is ignored by the one making making this complaint. Hey, there is so much soccer on everywhere from different providers that these complaints then are not warranted and just get tiresome.
TOM GORBON
March 15, 2022 at 4:24 pm
I refuse.. I am in NY..with Cablevision Optimum…I just watch the champions league in Spanish and a few EPL games each month..I refuse to pay extra..my cable bill is 220 a month…refuse to pay an extra penny..My wife and I watch ID channel which we have to get a certain package to watch and of course its the most expensive 1. I hate Cablevision.
Ra
March 15, 2022 at 5:01 pm
If you are calculating the annual cost to watch these leagues, you should do # of months that they are going times monthly cost. They usually go for 9 months, so you would be paying 9/12 * monthly cost which results in a savings of 25% vs 10/12 of the typical annual fee. The upside of paying on a month-to-month basis is that you can switch leagues during the year. You also can benefit from the multiple promos they have during the year. I would say that at the end of the day, I usually pay ~50% of the monthly fee on a per-year basis to watch an entire league.
I usually cancel every service in the same transaction at the moment when I subscribe. It only takes < 1 min to resubscribe, as most services will save your CC. I just like to keep reassessing my habits.
KW
March 15, 2022 at 2:40 pm
Good comparison. Universo gets most of the PL matches that are on USA network. Cheapest package with Universo is Sling Latino for $10/month. Also gets beIN sports channels with that for Ligue 1 and other soccer like AFCON.
Another thing to note is that quite a few matches are available for free if you have access to an antenna. In Philly all the Philadelphia Union games not nationally televised are available for free over the air.
Telemundo – some EPL, Liga MX
NBC – 1 EPL match per week
Univision – some Liga MX, Champions League, MLS
Fox – some MLS
CBS – some Champions League and NWSL