A Year Without Cable, Week 8: World Cup for Cord-Cutters

Cord-cutting typically means losing the ability to watch live sports. This is especially painful when it’s a major sporting event that only comes along, say, every four years. The World Cup fits this description, but while you may believe that you’ll be stuck going to the local pub for today’s 6 PM match between the U.S. and seasoned U.S. eliminator Ghana, that’s not the case as long as you subscribe to broadband Internet from one of the below providers.

Streaming World Cup soccer comes courtesy of WatchESPN, an online service that ESPN operates quite liberally. While other major networks are quite stingy with their content, requiring that you have a full cable TV package (with the channel included) to stream TV shows, ESPN has structured WatchESPN to provide access to quite a bit of programming ESPN networks (but mostly on ESPN3), even if you only subscribe to broadband Internet.

This is, of course, great for cord-cutters.

All you have to do is visit the WatchESPN homepage, where you’ll find links to all of the live, streamable content ESPN is offering. If you don’t have Flash installed, you’ll need to get that onto your system. You’ll also need to authenticate your Internet subscription using your ISP user name and password. Once you’re in, though? All the World Cup soccer you could ask for.

And you’re not limited to the browser, by the way. There are mobile apps for WatchESPN, and you can also find the app on many set-top boxes and video game consoles. Search in the app store on your smartphone, tablet or TV-connected device and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be blasting ESPN on your flat-screen in no time.

It’s not often that cord-cutters are thrown a live, streaming Internet bone for sports — take advantage! And if you watch the World Cup through WatchESPN, let us know what you think of the experience.