Cheapest ways to watch football on TV 2026

Which channels have football TV rights for 2025/26?

In 2025/26, the rights for showing live English, Scottish and European football on TV are shared between six broadcasters:

• Sky Sports
• TNT Sports
• Amazon Prime Video
• BBC
• ITV
• Premier Sports.

Unfortunately, no single broadcaster has the rights to show every competition. Even the rights to individual competitions are sometimes split between channels too.

If you’re wondering where to watch the Premier League, Champions League, Carabao Cup or any other major competition this season, this table breaks down which channels have which live matches.

But remember that highlights are often available on free-to-air channels or online. For example, as well as the Premier League, the BBC now has Champions League highlights too.

How many football matches does each broadcaster have?

Broadcaster	Premier League	European cups	FA Cup	Carabao Cup	EFL	Scottish Premiership	Women's Super League
	-	17 Champions League matches	-	-	-	-	-	Deals »
	215	-	-	All	1,000+	60	118	Deals »
	52	All*	40+	-	-	-	-	-
	-	-	14	-	-	30 (BBC Scotland)	21	-
	-	-	-	9	10	-	-	-
	-	-	-	-	-	22	-	-

* TNT Sports broadcasts every single UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League fixture, apart from those on Amazon.

Cheap Sky Sports deals and offers

Although it doesn’t quite have the monopoly on TV rights it once did, Sky Sports is still arguably the biggest sports broadcaster in the UK.

Sky Sports has more than four times the number of English Premier League (EPL) games than any other broadcaster, including all first-pick matches (basically meaning they can show the best game every weekend) and the Monday and Friday night football slots.

The English Football League is also almost exclusively available to watch live on Sky Sports. And you’ll be able to watch all the Carabao Cup games and many live Scottish Premier League (SPL) fixtures.

We have a full guide to saving money on Sky Sports and have included a quick overview of some tips below.

Cheap NOW Sky Sports Memberships

If you’re a slightly more casual football fan, or you only fancy paying to watch your own team play, you might be better off buying NOW passes as and when you want to watch Sky Sports.

NOW (formerly NOW TV) offers these types of Sky Sports Passes:

• Day membership – £14.99
• Six-month saver membership – £28 per month (minimum term six months, £34.99 per month thereafter)
• Flexible month membership – £34.99 per month (no minimum term).
  

While some of these prices may seem a little steep, there are loads of ways to get discounts on NOW memberships.

For starters, NOW will often run discounts on these passes – so it’s worth keeping an eye out for that.

But if you can afford to pay full price for a short while, this might be your best bet. Because if you do that, and then go through the cancellation process, NOW will often give you a hefty discount off the cost of another membership.

Exactly what you get will vary, but a quick Google shows that some people have got well over £10 off the monthly cost, often with other NOW passes thrown in too. And this doesn’t just work with NOW Sports – we’ve done it with NOW Entertainment for years now.

These offers often change, so check for offers before paying full price.

Cheap Sky Sports Passes »

Watch Sky Sports for free on Sky channels

Sky will sometimes double up and show a game on Sky Showcase or Sky Max as well as Sky Sports. While this only tends to happen on special occasions (like the first game of the season, or during the festive period), they’ll usually get at least a couple of games each season. So it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Likewise, Pick, which has now rebranded as Sky Mix, would also often broadcast these games, and this channel is available on Freeview. However, this isn’t always the case, so how can you watch Sky channels at a cut price?

Well, if you’re ever lucky enough to have one of your team’s games selected for Sky Max/Showcase coverage, or you just fancy watching whichever fixture they go for, you could make a significant saving by buying a different type of NOW membership.

Sky Max and Sky Showcase are both included in a NOW Entertainment Membership. Even in its monthly form, the membership RRP is a pretty reasonable £9.99 a month. This is cheaper than the Sky Sports Day Pass, plus an extra 29 days thrown in. And with the six-month saver membership, you can get it for £6.99 a month.

There are loads of ways to get cheap NOW memberships, so to save us from repeating ourselves, check out our guide to streaming films and TV for less.

Cheap ways to watch TNT Sports

Alongside Sky Sports, TNT Sports is the other big broadcaster of football in the UK.

Although it has far fewer Premier League games than Sky (but still 52, which is no small amount), it has every single game in all three European cup competitions (apart from the 17 broadcast on Amazon Prime Video).

And as if all that wasn’t enough, they also have the rights to over 40 FA Cup games this season.

Get TNT Sports for free with EE TV

Back in the day, BT TV customers used to get the BT Sports channels for free as part of their standard package.

Since then, BT Sports has become TNT Sports, and BT TV has become EE TV. A little confusing, but the end result is that TV customers no longer get the sports channels included for free.

Except, some do. If you were a subscriber to BT TV in the past, you may still be eligible for a free discovery+ subscription, which is what TNT Sports now streams on. It’s definitely worth checking!

Get cheap TNT Sports with EE Mobile

If you’re not lucky enough to get free access to TNT Sports with your existing TV package, you can still watch its coverage for far, far less if you’re an EE Mobile customer.

EE offers Inclusive Extras with some of its plans, which could be anything from Netflix to Apple TV+ or, yes, even TNT Sports.

The ones on offer vary depending on the plan you choose, and TNT is only available on the most expensive tier (Unlimited Full Works). At the time of writing, a SIM only Unlimited Full Works plan will set you back a whopping £48 per month – much more expensive than some of the other best SIM only deals out there.

But there are a couple of ways to bring this cost down.

Existing EE Mobile customers can get £10 off the monthly cost when they add another line to their account. This is only an option if you or someone you live with are already with EE mobile and are happy to add another line – but if so, that’s a decent saving.

But better still, if you have EE Broadband and EE Mobile, you can get exclusive discounts with EE One.

With this, the cost of an Unlimited Full Works plan drops to £29.50 – not far off half the original price. If you consider that the cheapest high- or unlimited-data SIM only deals usually come in at £10 – £15, this puts the cost of everything else in the plan (including TNT Sports) at £14.50 – £19.50. Not bad at all!

Watch the Champions League final for free

Come the end of the season, TNT Sports broadcasts the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League finals completely free on the discovery+ app.

So, if any of those are the games you want to watch, don’t pay!

How to watch football on Amazon Prime for free

Amazon Prime Video no longer has the rights to any of the Premier League fixtures.

However, the streaming service does have the exclusive rights to 17 matches from the Champions League in the 2025/26 season.

While this may not seem like much, we all know these can be some of the best fixtures of the season.

Six months of Amazon Prime for free

Credit: Teerinvata – Shutterstock

It’s one of our favourite deals, so forgive us if you’re already in the loop – but as a student, you’re entitled to a six-month free trial of Amazon Prime Student.

Amazon Prime Student has pretty much all of the same major perks as the standard Prime offering, including access to Prime Video. Amazon’s Champions League games are available to watch on Prime Video at no extra cost, meaning if you’re a Prime member, you’ll be able to watch the football too.

Annoyingly, Champions League matches run from September 2025 right through to May 2026 – so a little longer than six months. But if you time it right, you’ll be able to watch the majority of Amazon’s games for free.

Bearing in mind you can watch the final for free on TNT Sports, you only need your Prime subscription to run until the last Champions League semi-final finishes on the 6th May 2026. In other words, as long as you start your six-month trial on 6th November 2025 or later, you’ll be covered for the rest of Amazon’s games.

And if you start your free trial around this time, not only will you be able to watch almost all of Amazon’s Champions League games, you’ll also get free next-day delivery for your Christmas shopping.

Again, though, you’ll need to remember to cancel your free trial before the six months are up. Otherwise, you’ll automatically be charged either £47.49 or £4.49 (depending on whether it becomes a monthly or annual subscription).

Get Amazon Prime Student free »

How to watch BBC and ITV without a TV Licence

Aside from showing the weekend’s Premier League highlights on Match of the Day every Saturday and Sunday night, the BBC only has the rights to one competition this season. Fortunately, it’s a cracker: the FA Cup, which this season it shares with TNT Sports.

This year, the Beeb will be showing 14 FA Cup games. This will include two games per round from the first round onwards. At the business end of the season, the BBC will have one semi-final and the final live.

Unfortunately, ITV no longer has the rights to broadcast FA Cup games. However, in the 2025/26 season, it is broadcasting nine of the Carabao Cup games and 10 EFL games that are available on Sky Sports.

While it’s easy to think of the BBC and ITV as being free (they’re available on Freeview, after all), you will need a TV Licence to watch both channels… except when you don’t.

Despite TV Licensing making a big deal about the fact that you even need a licence to watch iPlayer, we’ve uncovered a totally legal loophole (as confirmed by TV Licensing themselves) which could let you watch live television without paying for a TV Licence.

Check out our guide to the TV Licence loophole for more info.

How to watch live football on TV for free

If you’d rather not pay to watch live football on TV and, for whatever reason, you’re unable to use the above tips on watching matches for free, there is one more way to do it: go to a pub or bar that’s showing the game.

There’s a decent chance your students’ union will screen games on Sky Sports and TNT Sports. If so, this is almost certainly the cheapest way to watch live football on TV (bearing in mind that the cost of a pint is usually less than at a normal pub).

If your SU hasn’t forked out for Sky or TNT Sports, then beyond complaining that your tuition fees should be going to worthy causes such as this, your next best bet is to head to the pub.

Although they can be relied upon for pretty much anything else, Wetherspoon pubs almost never have Sky Sports or TNT Sports (this is partly how they manage to make everything else so cheap). Instead, you’ll need to find another pub to watch the game – and that’s where Fanzo comes in.

Fanzo (formerly MatchPint) is a handy app that shows you pubs and bars in your area that are screening whichever sporting event you’re interested in. What’s more, Fanzo sometimes also sorts you out with a free pint when you get there!

The only downside is that in order to be featured on the app, pubs and bars have to supply Fanzo with the information they need. So, while it’s fair to assume that the ones listed on the app are showing the game, there’s no guarantee that places not listed on the app aren’t showing it too.

And, although it’s technically free to watch football at the pub, it’s worth weighing up the cost of paying to watch it at home against the money you’ll end up spending on drinks and eating out.

If you’re interested in matched betting (for people aged 18+), make sure you do plenty of research first.