Nearly Half of Sports Fans Have a Subscription Problem

American sports fans are paying more than necessary

According to a recent survey from CableTV.com, 46% of American sports fans continued paying for a TV service they meant to cancel after a season ended. In contrast, nearly 58% deliberately subscribed only during a specific season of their favorite team or league, suggesting a fairly sizeable disconnect in consumer behavior.

These most recent survey results mirror previous data collected by CableTV.com from real-world streaming customers in which nearly half of respondents said they’ve been charged $20–$50 for letting a free trial lapse. That sounds like a relatively small amount, but it can add up or even get a little out of control, with another 9% of Americans also reporting being charged $100 or more from forgotten “ghost” subscriptions.

At the same time, many Americans are trying to plug the streaming-sized hole in their wallets. An Ipsos poll from last fall, for example, found that 39% of Americans canceled at least one streaming service in the last six months, up from 31% two years ago.

Still, managing subscriptions efficiently to save money is harder than it seems. As the stats suggest, what some sports fans call the “rotational strategy” doesn’t always work.

Subscription creep is real

The problem of requiring paid subscriptions to watch your hometown team has gotten so bad that even some elected officials have entered the fray.

“Gigantic streaming services and big sports leagues have created a complicated and expensive maze of subscriptions that either stop fans from watching their teams altogether or gouge fans to simply watch the teams they love,” said Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin in a press release introducing the For the Fans bill this past spring. If passed, the bill would limit blackouts and guarantee free viewing options for local fans.

While it’s difficult to produce a smoking gun (to my knowledge, no cabal of evil streaming execs exists as of writing), the practical effect of spreading league and team broadcast rights across streaming services and channels is more subscriptions to keep track of.

“In today’s sports media landscape, having more ways to watch doesn’t always mean an easier viewing experience,” said CableTV.com Sports Editor Taylor Kujawa. “With rights scattered across so many networks and streaming platforms, fans can end up paying more while juggling services they may barely use, even if that fragmentation wasn’t designed to encourage oversubscription. The NFL is probably the clearest example of how quickly following one league can turn into a multi-service hunt.”

How much has NFL broadcast coverage changed?

Just ask yourself, “How many TV services did I need to watch my favorite NFL team five years ago?” The answer was one or two, depending on the TV market you called home. And you only began needing a subscription to watch your local NFL team about twenty years ago, when Monday Night Football moved to ESPN and NFL Network started broadcasting Thursday night games.

Now you need a live TV service that carries ESPN for many Monday Night Football games, an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription via YouTube or YouTube TV for out-of-market games, a Prime Video subscription for Thursday Night Football, a Peacock sub for its exclusive Week 17 game, and a Netflix subscription to watch a smattering of holiday games, one international match, one Week 18 game, and NFL Honors.

That’s a lot to keep track of after the season ends in February, and the NFL is by no means an outlier.

Canceling your subscription doesn’t have to be hard

While searching the internet and talking to experts, I came across some suggestions to help you remember to cancel the next time your team closes out its season (hopefully with a well-deserved trophy).

For example, Reddit user Dogzilla_Mom commented on a lively streaming thread, “Sometimes, I just immediately cancel after signing up because I only need access for that free week or month or whatever.” My partner and I do this all the time to great effect. Just be aware that some services, as our streaming reporter Olivia Bono pointed out in another recent CableTV.com report, “will cut you off as soon as you cancel, so make sure you’ve watched everything you wanted before you hit that button.”

Another Reddit user, Ganar49, suggested the following tactic in another thread: “For that sort of expense, I use a reminder app. For example, I sign up for Amazon Prime for one month to watch a specific show. I set a reminder to cancel Amazon Prime in 29 days’ time.” I’ve also used this method before —  just make sure your app notifications are on and flowing to the right device (you might not be logged in to your work laptop 24/7, for example).

Tiffany Connors, Senior Managing Editor at The Penny Hoarder and Certified Educator in Personal Finance, agrees with Reddit users and offers a couple of tips I’d never considered before:

“Anytime you’re signing up for a free trial, there are two important things to do. First, note how long the free trial is and set a reminder in your calendar a couple of days before. Time can get away from you quickly, so if you’re having a hectic day or an emergency, you’ll have a cushion to avoid getting charged. Second, take a screenshot of the part of the signup page that shows the cancellation instructions. This is one of those things services have to provide, but it often gets harder to find after you’ve signed up. If you don’t have that info, The Penny Hoarder has a post explaining how to cancel some of the most popular subscriptions.

Finally, one last tip: After you cancel, take a screenshot of the confirmation. It’s as much a check on you as it is for the service. Sometimes, it’s easy to go through the whole cancellation process and miss the final confirmation button (subscription services are known to do this on purpose). If you have the confirmation, it ensures you don’t get an unwelcome surprise charge next month.”

Like I said, my partner and I have used the calendar-reminder and immediate-cancellation methods a lot over the years, and nine out of 10 times they work like a charm. I’ll be screenshotting the cancellation directions going forward.

Save upfront with deals and bundles

At this point, you might be saying, “That’s all well and good, but that ain’t me.” If you love all sports and don’t have the time or the disposition to keep track of all of your subscriptions, CableTV.com recommends scoring your savings upfront with deals and bundles.

Not surprisingly, our deals reporter, Logan Jones, has a lot of thoughts:

“Regardless of how hard you try to play the cancellation game, some will still slip through your fingers. I still say play the game — if you have reminders set to cancel before your trial’s up — but even better is finding upfront deals that will last longer than a month. Even as many streamers (looking at you, Hulu) have nixed free trials, plenty still offer discounts to students, young adults, teachers, military, and more.

Still, I think some of the best deals come from bundling. These discounts never expire and can save you big when you want multiple services. For example, even if you only want Hulu, it costs only $1.00 more to bundle it with Disney+.”

In fact, streaming bundles are enjoying a bit of a moment. As The New York Times recently reported: “The cancellation numbers for the package, known in the industry as churn, fell so much that the executives did a ‘double take,'” quoting David Zaslav, the CEO and President of Warner Bros. Discovery. Streaming bundles are purportedly slowing subscription churn for media companies and verifiably saving consumers money, a veritable win-win.

Similarly, young adults can watch a ton of live sports for cheap, starting at as little as $6.99 per month, thanks to student discounts that come and go each month.

And depending on the sport, you could save upwards of $60.00 a year by signing up for an annual plan (e.g., F1 on Apple TV), according to Business Insider. If you’re a mega sports fan or a true TV head, I highly recommend reviewing the annual discounts that we’ve documented at CableTV.com to potentially save hundreds of your hard-earned dollars per year.

And to bring this full circle, if you’re feeling spicy, you could even try one of my favorite tricks: an empty threat. As we previously reported at CableTV.com, streaming services often offer discounts when you begin the cancellation process. Take that, ghost subscriptions!

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