How to Make Sure You’re Ready to Stream March Madness

March 13, 2017

The NCAA Tournament is quickly approaching and so is the excitement for some of the best weeks in all of sports. Both casual and diehard fans tune in every year to follow along with all of the action to watch all the drama unfold.

March Madness is truly one of the most exciting events in all of sports, and thankfully there are multiple ways to stream the NCAA Tournament . Before the games begin, there are a few key things you’ll need to do to make sure you’re ready to stream the entire tournament. Here are some of the most important steps you need to take to get ready.

Ensure a Strong Internet Connection
When you stream anything, whether it be live TV or any of the popular on-demand streaming services, the most important thing to have is a strong internet connection. Before the tournament starts you should make sure you have a powerful enough internet connection, so it won’t interfere with watching the games live.
There would be nothing worse than a big game coming down to the last seconds and you miss the final play because your internet connection decides this would be the best time for a little buffering. You need at least 5mbps per stream if you want a solid connection, so the solution may be to only stream one thing at a time in your house. You can check your connection speed here to make sure you’re ready.
The March Madness Live App Works for Cable Subscribers
Anyone who still has a cable subscription can take advantage of the NCAA’s official streaming service for the tournament, March Madness Live . You can download the app on a variety of devices and there’s an online website as well for watching on your computer. To get started, you just need to login with your cable subscription credentials.
You can watch all of the games that come on the channels you already have in your cable subscription. This means if you have TBS, TNT, truTV, and CBS you can stream every game during the entire NCAA Tournament.
No Cable? You’re Covered with Streaming Services
The growing trend of cable cutting has not surprisingly resulted in a huge growth in services that offer the ability to stream live TV. These services don’t cost nearly as much as a cable subscription and can be incredibly helpful during the tournament.
Sling TV is one example and it has a starting price of either $20 or $25 per month. With this you can watch March Madness games on TBS, TNT, or truTV. Plus, you can watch free for a week with a free trial.

Another great service that also lets you watch the games on TBS, TNT, and truTV is DIRECTV NOW. This is a newer service from AT&T that has a starting price of $35 per month. For the extra cost you do get a bunch more channels to stream and there’s also a free trial to test out the service for free. Get more details on DIRECTV NOW here .

The one thing both services is lacking is the ability to watch CBS live. To do this, you can leverage CBS All Access. The service live streams whatever CBS is broadcasting in your area, so you can tune in to every March Madness game CBS broadcasts. Plus, it only costs $5.99 for an entire month, so this is a great add-on service to combine with one of the above.
Get the Right Tools to Watch
One of the other critical things to do is make sure you’re actual physical setup is ready for the tournament. This means if you want to stream March Madness on your TV, you’ll need a streaming device. These devices let you connect your phone, tablet, or computer to your TV and watch all of your streams on the big screen.
Some of the most popular devices out there are Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV Sticks. These all are compatible with a majority of the services on the market, except Roku which DIRECTV NOW has not yet added compatibility for. No big deal, because you’ll have plenty of options to pick and choose from.
Don’t Forget About Mobile Data
Sometimes in the middle of a big game you might forget about some pretty important details, like the fact you’re streaming over mobile data. This is a huge thing to look out for, because before you know it you could be way over your data limit after watching just one game. The cost on data overages are outrageous and unless you’ve got a great deal on unlimited data , this is something to certainly keep an eye on.

Hopefully, you take this advice and get yourself completely prepared for March Madness. It can easily be streamed, so just make sure you get set up correctly ahead of time and you’ll be able to enjoy every second of the action!

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