How much will it cost to watch football on TV in the UK and US in 2025

Watching live sports on television has arguably never been as accessible as it is today.

The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world and is broadcast in more than 180 countries around the world.

Whether you are in the UK, USA or Uzbekistan, or anywhere else you can think of except Russia, you will have the option to watch the biggest football teams.

But at a time when pockets are tight due to the current cost of living crisis, watching live sports, particularly football, from the comfort of the sofa, could be seen as a luxury item.

The Athletic has reported on the increasing number of people resorting to illegal streaming devices, with almost five million people in the UK alone (nine per cent of the adult population) watching sport via this method in the six months to October 2025.

In the UK and US, multiple subscriptions are required to access the Premier League, Champions League, Major League Soccer and major European leagues, and come at a cost.

“Match tickets, the price of travel tickets and all the necessary subscriptions are pushing people to the limit in many cases,” says Tom Greatrex, president of the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA). The Athletic.

“What has always been a very accessible sport for spectators has become, in many cases, prohibitively expensive for people. And not that you approve, it is not at all surprising that people use streaming, even though it is illegal. They will take that risk because watching sports as they should be watched is simply too expensive for them.

“If things were priced more appropriately, then maybe it wouldn’t be as big a problem as it is now.”

The first thing to know about the cost of watching live football in the UK is that it starts with paying for a television licence. Paid annually, it costs £174.50 ($231), although you can choose to pay £14.54 ($19) per month.

As part of UK government legislation, you must have a TV license if you want to watch or record programs on a TV while they are broadcast live. Paying the fee also gives you access to BBC iPlayer on demand.

It’s worth noting that you don’t need a TV license to stream Netflix, Prime Video and, among other platforms, YouTube through your TV. If you are caught watching live TV without a licence, you could face a fine of up to £1,000 ($1,314).

It’s also important to note that the monthly subscription price of either TNT Sports in the UK or Paramount+ in the US unlocks all live sports content on that particular channel.

So now that that’s out of the way and you’re already down to £174.50 before you even turn on your TV, you won’t be surprised to learn that this is just the first of many payments if you want to consume as much live football in the UK as possible.

Sky Sports is the main Premier League football broadcaster in the UK, with at least 215 matches broadcast live in 2025-26 as part of the new domestic television rights cycle, up from 128 matches in 2024-25.

A 31-day rolling subscription to Sky will cost you £25 a month and you’ll need to add the Sky Sports package to access its live sports offer, which costs an extra £25 a month, for a total of £50 ($66). In addition to 215 Premier League matches, this will also give you access to 33 Bundesliga matches per season.

And if you want to consume 52 more Premier League matches over the course of a campaign, you’ll need to sign up to TNT Sports, which currently costs £30.99 ($41) a month. This means you’ll have to spend over £80 ($105) a month to watch top-flight football live in the UK.

Sky offers a Now TV pass, which gives you access to Sky Sports for 24 hours, if you only want to watch one day of live sport, for a one-off cost of £14.99 ($20). Meanwhile, a Now TV monthly pass costs £34.99 ($46).

“I think the easiest solution, and I know it’s very difficult to implement, is that we almost need to go back to a monopolistic view of sports where it’s done exclusively through one provider,” says Paolo Pescatore, UK-based technology and media analyst at PP Foresight. The Athleticwhen asked to reflect on the price of watching football and the rise of illegal streaming.

“But in reality, it’s going to become much more fragmented as Amazon spends more, Netflix develops the architecture to ensure they can deliver live sports at scale across their networks, and then there’s Disney+ and whoever else comes to the table.”

(Carl Recine/Getty Images)

If you just want to watch the highlights of every Premier League match at no extra cost to your TV licence, you can skip subscribing to Sky Sports and TNT Sports and tune in to Match of the Day on the BBC, which airs on Saturday and Sunday nights. Viewers can also watch Champions League highlights on the BBC.

By comparison, NBC Sports in the US owns exclusive rights to all 380 Premier League games per season, made possible by there being no 3pm Saturday blackout like there is in the UK, which will cost Americans $10.99 (£8) a month. Games are broadcast on the NBC Sports network (NBC, Peacock, USA Network).

There is constant talk that the Premier League will eventually go direct to consumer, but its national broadcast deal with Sky Sports and TNT Sports in the UK is worth £1.6bn ($2.1bn) a year, with NBC paying $450m (£342m) a year for the rights.

When it comes to watching the Champions League in the UK, you’ll need a subscription to TNT Sports, as well as a Prime Video membership.

TNT Sports exclusively broadcasts 187 Champions League matches a year in the UK, as well as 189 Europa League matches, and Prime Video, which costs £8.99 ($12) a month, has exclusive rights to 17 games during a Champions League tournament.

In the US, where you can watch both competitions on CBS, with access to all UEFA matches via a Paramount+ subscription, it costs $7.99 (£6) a month.

The Paramount+ subscription also includes the ability to watch all Women’s Champions League matches. People in the UK can watch 52 games via Disney+ (£5.99 a month) and seven on the BBC.

14 Men’s FA Cup matches are also available on the BBC, and 65 men’s and women’s matches are now broadcast on TNT Sports, although some of them are broadcast free of charge.

(Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

For MLS this season, viewers in the UK and US will first need a subscription to Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass, which costs £12.99 a month in the UK and $14.99 in the US. This included access to all 510 regular season matches, as well as all post-season matches.

However, on November 13, Apple announced that starting in 2026, MLS will be available without the need to pay an additional season pass fee. NBC and Apple recently introduced a bundle combining Apple TV with Peacock for $14.99 (£11) a month, which will give American fans access to the Premier League, MLS and F1 in one place.

The fragmentation of live football is most common when it comes to Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga, France’s Ligue 1 and Germany’s Bundesliga.

All 380 Serie A games in the UK are available on DAZN, costing £19.99 ($26) for a monthly subscription, and Paramount+ in the US streams over 400 Italian football matches if you include all Suppercoppa Italiana games and at least 25 Coppa Italia matches.

Spanish football fans in the UK can watch 38 La Liga matches through a Disney+ subscription, but will have to pay for Premier Sports, which costs £16.99 ($22) a month, to access the remaining 352 matches.

In the United States, a subscription to ESPN Select, priced at $12.99 (£10) per month, includes all 380 Spanish league games.

Surprisingly, the Bundesliga has five different broadcasters in the UK. Prime Video has the rights to 68 matches, Sky Sports can broadcast 33 games, the BBC has the rights to 20 games, while YouTube channels ‘The Overlap’ and ‘That’s Football’ have access to 20 games. Games on YouTube are streamed for free.

ESPN Select has the rights to broadcast more than 300 Bundesliga matches in America.

(LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images)

France’s Ligue 1 launched its direct-to-consumer streaming service, called Ligue1+, at the start of this season. It costs £9.99 ($13) per month and includes all matches. UK viewers, however, will not be able to watch any games live during the 3pm blackout period, but will be able to watch them on-demand via the streaming service.

French soccer fans in the United States will have to pay for beIN SPORTS, which will give them access to at least four Ligue 1 matches per week. It costs $14.99 (£11) a month and is available through all cable providers or Fubo TV.

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) is the most fragmented competition in the United States, with matches broadcast on CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video, ION and NWSL+, while in the UK all NWSL+ games are available for free via the NWSL+ platform.

The English Women’s Super League (WSL) is broadcast by three different providers: Sky Sports, the BBC and the WSL YouTube channel.

ESPN has the rights to 57 WSL games in the US, and American fans can also watch matches via the league’s YouTube channel.

The US national teams can be watched on Turner Sports, TNT via HBO Max Stream, which costs $10.99 (£8) a month, and Peacock.

(James Fearn/Getty Images)

With illegal streaming on the rise, Greatrix believes it would be “appropriate, rational and sensible” for the price of watching live football at home to be re-examined to ensure it is “less tempting” for people to do so illegally.

But the costs broadcasters pay to secure live rights are on an upward curve, and the only way to get their money back is to charge a monthly subscription and advertising.

Interestingly, Pescatore believes that, at least in the UK, the subscription model, when it comes to top-flight football, has stagnated.

“There are probably no more subscribers to gain from the Premier League alone,” he says. “There is another argument: why force people to subscribe to a package as part of a television service when you can decouple it completely?

“Maybe that’s one way to go, which would give you a lot more flexibility in terms of choosing which live sport you want to watch and paying rather than paying for access to multiple sports.”

No matter how you dress it up, the fact that more people are turning to illegal streams is rightly a cause for concern for leagues and broadcasters; However, the fragmented nature of live sport and the price it costs to watch is clearly a concern for those who choose to watch illegally.

And not only is it a debate that will continue to rage, it is suspected that illegal streamers are set to become more entrenched as the fragmented nature of live sport, coupled with a cost of living crisis, makes it harder for people to pay to watch.

Additional information: Melanie Anzidei