On Saturday, the BYU football game vs. Colorado State will be available to stream at 5:30 MST on Paramount+.
The Price of Different Paramount+ plans
Paramount+ has two plans. The Essential plan starts at $8.99 a month with ads. The Premium plan, which lets you watch without ads on anything outside live TV, including football, starts at $13.99 a month. Paramount+ also offers a student deal giving you 50% off either plan if you verify your student status with a school affiliated email address (your student ID email ending in @byu.edu).
In an age where sports are growing more and more profitable, more streaming services want a piece of the pie. That's making it harder for the everyday fan to access the games.
What students think
"What even is Paramount+?" said Ella Gatherum, a BYU student majoring in accounting. "I love BYU football and want to watch these games, but respectfully I'm not spending $20 to watch a single game, that's ridiculous."
Some students are giving up hope of watching the Cougs this Saturday, while others are getting a bit more creative.
"Yeah we're just gonna get a bunch of guys together like we usually do," said Zach Alvord, a Utah Valley University pre-dental student. "We all only got to contribute like 40 cents then we can watch. If not, it's only like four bucks and I’ll just cover it, but everyone usually Venmos anyways because we usually get pizza or something like that."
BYU isn't alone. Conferences across the country have signed streaming deals that split games across multiple platforms, ESPN+, Peacock, and others, on top of traditional game streaming services like YoutubeTV or cable packages. For fans, that often means juggling several subscriptions just to follow one team through a full season.
"I was trying to watch an NFL game the other day and I couldn't find it, so I looked it up and it was on Netflix, which was fine with me because I already had Netflix and I thought the video quality was surprisingly high," said Alvord. "But I can also see how that could be super annoying for someone who's trying to save money and just wants to watch some games."
From Paramount+ to ESPN+ to Netflix to whatever platform decides that they want the next big game. Fans are being asked to piece together a puzzle of football coverage.
At what point does the love for your game and the team get outweighed by the price of all these subscription services?