Sports Shows — Where to Watch
The shows around sport are a different product from the sport itself. Highlights programmes, weekly review shows, studio analysis, rolling news channels and documentaries are usually bought in a separate deal from the live rights, and they are usually bought by a different kind of broadcaster: a public one, which is why so many of them are free.
This page covers the shows we could verify — which one, on which service, in which country, and whether it costs anything. It does not list kick-off times or broadcast schedules, because those change weekly and a wrong listing is worse than none.
The shows that are free
| Show | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Match of the Day | BBC, UK. The Premier League highlights programme, and the only free route to the Premier League in Britain. | Free on BBC iPlayer. A TV licence is legally required for iPlayer and for any live television watched online in the UK. |
| Champions League highlights | BBC, UK. | Free. Note that the final itself is no longer free in the UK — the 2026 final was the first in 34 years that was not. |
| EFL highlights | ITV, UK, alongside its 10 live EFL matches a season. | Free on ITVX. On-demand viewing needs no licence; the live channel does. |
| Cricket and golf highlights | BBC, UK — Test cricket, The Hundred and The Open. | Free. The Open is highlights only on the BBC, and the Test coverage is highlights and selected matches rather than the full series. |
| Tour de France highlights | Channel 5, UK — a daily 7pm highlights show. | Free. This became the UK’s free route to the Tour in 2026, after ITV dropped the race and live coverage moved to TNT Sports and HBO Max. The race is still free live in France on france.tv and in Australia on SBS On Demand. |
| Sportschau and sportstudio | ARD and ZDF, Germany — the Saturday highlights programme and its ZDF equivalent. | Free, no login, geo-locked to Germany. ARD also carries the Tour de France live. |
| La chaîne L’Équipe | France — the free sports channel of the L’Équipe group, which carries the Nations League among other things. | Free. TF1+ and M6+ also run free tiers alongside their paid ones. |
| Olympic Channel | olympics.com, and as a live channel inside CBC Gem in Canada. | Free. It carries qualifying events and archive rather than the Games themselves. |
| FIFA+ | FIFA’s own service, worldwide, plus a YouTube channel. | Free. Live matches, the World Cup archive and documentaries. It is a rights-holder’s own channel, which is the only kind of free stream we list. |
The American shows
In the United States the shows are not an afterthought bolted onto the live rights — several of them are the live rights. The NFL sells its weekly windows as branded programmes, and each one sits on a different service. That is why an American viewer asking “where is the football on?” is really asking which of four deals they already pay for.
| Programme | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday Night Football | NBC, with the exclusive national Sunday night window. | Paid. Peacock Premium, about $12.99 a month, is the streaming route. The cheaper Peacock Select tier carries no sport at all, which is the single most common mistake in this market. |
| Monday Night Football | ESPN or ABC, streaming in the ESPN app. | Paid. ESPN Unlimited carries it, along with the linear ESPN networks. |
| Thursday Night Football | Amazon Prime Video, exclusively, plus the Black Friday game and one Wild Card game. | Paid. It comes with an ordinary Prime subscription. |
| NFL RedZone | Carried by NFL+ Premium, YouTube TV and Sling in the United States, and by TSN Premium in Canada. | Paid, and sold as an add-on rather than a service of its own. Our research flags the US carriage list as one to re-check, so confirm it before subscribing. |
| NFL Network | A linear channel, carried inside ESPN Unlimited in the US and on DAZN Canada’s linear line-up in Canada. | Paid, as part of whichever bundle carries it. |
| ESPN studio output | The linear ESPN networks — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, SEC Network and ACC Network. | Paid. In the US these channels now sit inside ESPN Unlimited, or a traditional pay-television bundle. |
Documentaries and archive
Documentaries are the part of this market that has moved fastest, because they are cheap to license and expensive to replace. The verified free options are narrow:
- FIFA+ carries World Cup archive and documentaries free, worldwide, from the rights holder itself.
- DAZN’s free tier — a free account, no subscription, and not a trial — includes documentaries alongside its free live events. In Germany it also carries Champions League highlights, and that is Germany only.
- The Olympic Channel holds decades of Games archive, free.
- TSN Premium in Canada adds documentaries to the live sport on that tier.
Everything else we looked at sits inside a subscription. A general sports tier will usually include a documentary shelf, and the shelf is rarely the reason to buy the tier.
The cheapest legal route
- UK. BBC iPlayer plus ITVX covers Match of the Day, the Champions League and EFL highlights, the Tour highlights on Channel 5, and the golf and cricket highlights — with the TV licence as the only cost. It is the best free highlights package in any market we checked.
- Germany. ARD and ZDF, free and with no login, for Sportschau, sportstudio and live Tour de France.
- France. La chaîne L’Équipe, free.
- Worldwide. FIFA+ and the Olympic Channel, free from the rights holders.
- United States. There is no free equivalent. Peacock Premium at about $12.99 is the cheapest single route to Sunday Night Football, and ESPN Unlimited at about $31.99 is the cheapest route to Monday Night Football and the ESPN studio shows.
Is Match of the Day free?
Why are so many sports shows free when the sport is not?
Do I need a TV licence to watch sports highlights online in the UK?
Where can I watch NFL RedZone?
Is DAZN’s free tier a trial?
Where to go next
Premier League NFL Cycling Formula 1 Free-to-air sport Free live TV channels Free live streams