Technologies

Best Sports Streaming Service for 2022: ESPN Plus, DirecTV Stream, FuboTV and More

Hulu Plus Live TV, Sling TV, YouTube TV and other streaming services attempt to cater to sports fans, but only a few services have the content you actually need.

You don’t need cable anymore to watch sports. Cord-cutters can still stream the biggest games, including DirecTV Stream, YouTube TV and other live TV streaming services. But finding the right streaming service for you can be a pain. Not every service carries local regional sports networks, so you might not be able to catch your favourite team’s games.

For example, Boston-area hockey fans looking for the Bruins or Major League Baseball fans hoping to catch the Red Sox need NESN to view the majority of their games. That’s even if they subscribe to a league-sponsored, sport-specific package such asMLB TV, which doesn’t cover in-market games.

DirecTV Stream is the one exception to this among streaming services. It has nearly every RSN, particularly the Bally Sports (formerly Fox Sports) channels offered by Sinclair, but the company increased its prices earlier this year, and you’ll need to spring for its now $90-a-month plan to access them.

However, once your sport reaches the playoffs, games tend to shift from smaller, regional channels to those that reach a national audience and tend to be included in most TV packages. The NBA is one of the major exceptions to this, as you’ll still need access to NBA TV — which generally costs extra — in order to catch every first-round playoff game. Also, some sports, like Formula 1 racing, feature all of their contests on one national network, such as ESPN.

Depending on location, diehard sports fans might ultimately save more money by getting a cable subscription, as your RSNs come bundled with ESPN, TBS, TNT and other local channels. This could especially make sense if the package is bundled with the home internet you’ll likely be getting anyway.

If you’re a determined cord-cutter or know that you only need one or a few channels to get your sports fix, here are the best streaming services for you.

Read more: Best Streaming Devices for 2022

Sports streaming service FAQs

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Technologies

The FCC Just Approved Charter’s $34.5B Cox Purchase. Here’s What It Means for 37M Customers

Technologies

Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version.

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 28, #523

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 523, for Saturday, Feb. 28.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. Chicagoans and southerners, you might have an advantage, at least with the blue and purple categories. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Fore!

Green group hint: Take me out to the ballgame.

Blue group hint: Alma mater.

Purple group hint: Bear down.