How To Watch March Madness
You want to watch the 2018 men's NCAA basketball tournament. But since it's 2018 and you don't have a cable box1 you want to watch it online. Preferably for free.
That… is a tough ask. But it is possible.
The first step is to figure out what games are important to you. The Big Dance is made up of 67 games that are broadcast across four TV channels: CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. You can see which games will belong to which networks over on the schedule over at the official March Madness website.
The 21 games broadcast on CBS are available to watch on the tournament's official site and the NCAA March Madness Live app, which you can download for iPhone or Android. You don't need a login to watch these games, you can just hit play.
For the remaining 46 games — including the Final Four and national championship game — things are more complicated.
If you don't have a login, you'll get a 3-hour free trial on the official site, which will allow you watch about one and a half full games (or the last five minutes of a whole bunch of games, if you know what I'm sayin'.)
If you can somehow get your hands on someone's (say, your lovely parents') cable login (AT&T U-verse, Cox, DirecTV, Dish, Optimum, Spectrum, SuddenLink, Verizon FiOS or xfinity), you can stream the TBS, TNT or truTV games over the official website or app.
But if you don't know anyone willing to hand over their precious cable passwords, there's still ways to watch those cable games. These services will get you CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV (as well as ESPN and ESPN2 for the women's tournament):
- Sling's Orange package ($25/month, one-week free trial)
- Hulu Live ($39.99/month, one-week free trial)
- Playstation Vue's Access plan (39.99/month, 5-day free trial)
- YouTube TV ($40/month, one-week free trial)
A one-week trial will only get you the first weekend of the tournament2 or the Final Four, but we'll let you work out what you can achieve with four separate free trials.
Finally, if this sort of stuff seems too complex or you can't get your friend's parents' cable password to work, there's always… the cord cutter's dark arts. But we'll let you work that one out for yourself.
Happy Madness, everyone.
