Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Sling TV adds live scores and more for sports fans

Sling TV app icon on Apple TV.
Digital Trends

Sling TV — the third-largest live streaming service in the U.S. — today announced a handful of new features that touch a wide swath of the Sling experience.

Here’s what users have to look forward to:

Recommended Videos

Live sports scores are now available for more leagues, including college football and basketball, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball. You’ll be able to find team stats, too, including records, seedings, and rankings, as well as live game clocks and scores. And you’ll find more built into the home screen and integrated into the video player, making it all easy to find.

You also can now use your Apple ID to purchase a Sling subscription and manage other purchases and add-ons within the Sling system using Apple Pay.

Sling also has made it easier to immediately subscribe to content recommended through search results, on the home page, or even on other partner platforms.

And user profiles are now available on all devices, so you can personalize your favorite shows, movies, and recordings. An account can have up to five total user profiles, each of which can be individually labeled and color-coded.

“Our top priority at Sling is to provide our customers with the best television experience possible. We want to put people in charge of their entertainment,” Gary Schanman, executive vice president and group president, Dish Video Services, said in a press release. “That means, we look for ways to deliver new innovative functions that elevate the viewing experience and give customers more personalized features and menus allowing them to control what they watch, and how they watch and interact with the information available to them on our service.”

Sling sported just over 2 million subscribers as of October 2023, a little less than half as many as the second-place provider in the U.S., Hulu With Live TV. Sling has a free service that doesn’t even require a user to sign up, and the basic Sling plans start at $40. (With discounts for the first month of service.). Unfortunately, there’s currently no free Sling trial.

Phil Nickinson
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
Sling Orange vs. Sling Blue: Which Sling TV package is best?
Sling TV logo.

When it comes to cutting the cord on cable, you've got plenty of options to choose from. Sling TV is as close as you can get to à la carte TV — even though it is also definitely not that. However, it stands out from other live TV streaming services by delivering bundles of channels with plenty of extras.

Sling TV offers two base plans: Sling Orange and Sling Blue. Neither one has the massive channel list that you might see from competitors, but they come at a much more affordable price. With their library of "Extras," you can build out the channels missing from your bundle to get the TV lineup you want, at a price that won't ruin your budget.

Read more
What is ESPN+? Live sports and more you can’t get anywhere else
ESPN+ app on a movile device.

ESPN is synonymous with sports on TV. It stands to reason, then, that ESPN+ gets you more sports. And it does, in that newfangled way that transcends sports on TV. ESPN+ is the future of ESPN in a live TV streaming world. Probably. Eventually. Sort of.

It's a little complicated. It's perhaps better at the moment to consider ESPN+ the streaming service complementary to ESPN the cable network. You can get some of what's on ESPN on ESPN+. But at the same time, ESPN Plus has a lot that you can't get on the cable network.

Read more
Hulu Plus Live TV: plans, price, channels, bundles, and more
Hulu with Live TV.

If you want to cut the cable but you aren't ready to let go entirely, one of the best live TV streaming services out there is Hulu Plus Live TV. Billed as a Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD), Hulu Plus Live TV (also referred to as Hulu With Live TV) provides many of the features you've come to expect from your cable package. Along with live TV, you get access to Hulu's streaming library which includes thousands of hours of video including existing favorites, alongside original programming like The Bear and The Handmaiden's Tale. Since Hulu is owned by Disney, you can even bundle Hulu Plus Live TV with Disney Plus and ESPN+ for even more content.

There’s plenty to learn about Hulu Plus Live TV, and we’ve compiled all the most salient information into this helpful explainer. And do be sure to check back often, as Hulu With Live TV pricing and capabilities have been known to change in the blink of an eye.

Read more