There’s nothing more frustrating than looking forward to watching a sporting event, only to find out that you don’t have the required streaming service or cable package to access the game. With live sports properties more fragmented than ever, this exact situation happens more and more.
But one company is attempting to offer a solution to that problem. Sling TV has announced the launch of a “Day Pass” that will give users 24 hours of access to its Sling Orange package for a flat fee of $4.99.
“This launch is about putting control back in the hands of the fans, whether it’s tuning in for college football, professional sports, award shows, or a spontaneous movie night, all without having to sign a long-term, binding contract,” Seth Van Sickel, Senior Vice President, Product and Operations at Sling TV said in a statement. “With college football just around the corner, our new Day Pass offering is all consumers need to win on game day, for just $4.99.”
The company is also launching two more offerings, a “Weekend Pass” that gives users access to Sling Orange from Friday through Sunday for $9.99, and a “Week Pass” that gives seven days of access for $14.99.
The catch? Well, Sling Orange does not include some key channels that sports fans may need to watch their preferred events. The package includes ESPN and ESPN2, but not the rest of the ESPN family of networks like ESPNU or SEC Network. It also doesn’t include any local broadcast networks like NBC, Fox, CBS, or ABC, nor does it include any of the Fox Sports cable networks like FS1 or Big Ten Network. In fact, the only other sports-relevant networks in the Sling Orange package are TBS and TNT.
As such, the use case for such an offering seems very, very limited. Without most of the channels sports fans need, the Day Pass would only seem relevant for someone looking to catch a game (or games) scheduled for ESPN that doesn’t already have access to the network. Perhaps there could be some edge case uses during MLB postseason if someone needed access to TBS.
Other than that, this offering seems to be nice in theory, but hardly useful at all. Now, if Sling rolled out this same concept for its Orange & Blue package, which includes many more networks than the Orange package alone (though still excludes key channels like ABC, CBS, and many ESPN-owned networks), there would be a bit more of a use.
Until that happens, this seems to be a nice press release with little relevance to sports fans.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.