All you need is just a television and a reliable TV antenna. The Associated Press reports that NBC is providing 4,500 hours of coverage on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, including every single live event.
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2012: The year of the Summer Games in London, also carried by NBC, which ended up being the most-watched event in USA television history. But those without cable may need to plan in advance to get full access in real-time. The newly introduced Sling Blue streaming service costs $25 per month and bundles NBCSN (which will alone have 330 hours of Olympics coverage this summer), Bravo, and US, plus your local NBC station in select markets.
You can see the full schedule here, or subscribe to the Quartz Olympic Calendar to have the major events appear automatically in your calendar of choice.
This July 2016 image provided by Comcast Corp. shows a X1 Olympics demo captured in Philadelphia. While there are new wrinkles every year – Ryan Seacrest hosts a new late-night show, Mike Tirico joins from ESPN – the NBC playbook and personnel remain very consistent. NBC’s 170-member broadcast team includes a stable of former athletes, including swimmer Rowdy Gaines, gymnast Tim Daggett and diver Laura Wilkinson, that has combined for 59 Olympic medals.
If you want to watch your favorite countries compete in the Summer Olympics but you’ve ditched cable, we’ve got good news for you: You can still catch Olympics action even if you’ve cut the cord. Dish’s Sling TV also offers some NBC channels online for $25 a month. Twelve producers from BuzzFeed’s video division will create content for a temporary NBC Snapchat Discover channel that will appear during the Olympics. You can watch all 260-plus hours live for free if you have an antenna. All told, there will be more than 2,000 hours of television coverage, with live streaming of all the permanent channels on NBC’s app and website. You’ll need a video recorder such as TiVo to record events for later.
Watching the Olympics without cable is easier than ever, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some hurdles that need jumping.
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It’s also worth noting that if you’re not already a subscriber, you can create a Sling TV account with a seven-day free trial. With this, the $40 a month Vue service acts asa cable provider. One added bonus is that Vue keeps recordings for up to 28 days, but it’s not ubiquitous across all channels. You would also need some patience to adjust it to get the best reception possible. Another plus with watching worldwide Olympics broadcasts is that, unlike NBC, they don’t time-delay the broadcasts. The most useful for English-speaking Americans are Canada’s CBC and the UK’s BBC.
