The 2024 NCAA outdoor track and field championships take place at Hayward Field in Eugene this week. The finals for the various field events will be held every day from Wednesday through Saturday, while most of the finals for the track events will be on Friday (men) and Saturday (women). The decathlon will be spread across Wednesday and Thursday, while the heptathlon will be Friday and Saturday.
Coverage of the events will be televised on ESPN (Saturday) and ESPN2 (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday). However, if you don’t have cable, you can watch a live stream of the NCAA outdoor track and field championships via any of the following options.
Sling TV doesn’t offer a free trial like some of the options in the following section, but if you’ve used those free trials before, then Sling becomes the cheapest live-TV streaming service with both ESPN and ESPN2. The “Sling Orange” channel package is currently on sale for just $20 for your first month. Even when it goes up to $40 per month after that, it’s still far less expensive than any other live-TV streaming service.
ESPN+ will also stream the NCAA outdoor track and field championships, and that’s actually cheaper than Sling. However, with Sling, you can also stream the NBA playoffs, which are now into the finals. That’s why we’re listing Sling as the top overall streaming choice here.
As previously alluded to, Fubo (“Pro” channel package), YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” channel package or above) all include ESPN and ESPN2, and they all come with a free trial. So, if you sign up for one of them, you’ll be able to watch the entirety of the NCAA outdoor track and field championships before the trial comes to an end. As such, you can watch without paying anything.
We would go with Fubo, which has a longer free trial (seven days compared to five for the others) and more channels. That way, you can get more out of your free trial, but it’s really just splitting hairs at that point. Any of these options will be perfectly fine for watching a live stream of the championships.
ESPN+ will have full coverage of the NCAA outdoor track and field championships. Not only will it have a simulcast of the actual TV broadcasts, but it will also have individual streams for each event if you just want to focus on one. There’s no free trial, but ESPN+ is just $11 per month or $110 for the year.
Again, we like Sling because it’s not that much more expensive than ESPN+, and you’ll have a lot more options for live TV to watch after the championships conclude. However, if you simply want the very cheapest way (not counting free trials) to watch the championships, then ESPN+ is the way to go.
All of the streaming services we just covered are US-only, but you can access them from abroad if you use a virtual private network (VPN), which hides your IP address/location and connects you to a server in the US. This makes it look like–digitally, at least–you’re in the US, allowing you to stream otherwise location-restricted content.
We would go with NordVPN, but we’ve also put together a list of the best VPN deals and best VPN services if you want to explore some other options.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.