The next team up in attempting to stop the UConn freight train will be Alabama, who are making their very first Final Four appearance. The defending champs have won their last 10 tournament games by an average of 23.1 points, with no opponent managing to get within single digits, but Alabama does have some giant-killing experience after knocking off No. 1 seed UNC and a red-hot Clemson team en route to this Final Four matchup.
This one is scheduled to start very soon, at 8:49 p.m. ET, though it may get pushed back if Purdue vs NC State runs long. It’ll be televised on TBS, but if you’re looking to watch March Madness online, we’ve compiled all the different ways you can watch a live stream of UConn vs Alabama for free.
YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” package or above) are by far your best options here. Both of them include TBS in their channel packages, and both offer a free five-day trial.
Moreover, each of them also have ESPN in their channel packages. That means that single five-day free trial will get you both men’s Final Four games today, the women’s national championship on Sunday (ESPN) and the men’s national championship on Monday (TBS).
Note that you’ll need a credit card when you sign up for either one of these, but as long as you cancel your subscription before your free trial period ends, you won’t be charged anything.
If you’ve already used up both of those free trials, you can also potentially watch the game on the March Madness Live app or website. You can watch every game of the tournament if you sign in with a participating cable provider, but even if you don’t have that, you can watch unrestricted for your first three hours. Assuming you haven’t previously used up any of your free preview, that should be plenty of time to watch UConn vs Alabama.
If we take free trials out of the equation, then Max (formerly HBO Max) is the cheapest way to watch a live stream of the game. It costs $10 per month, and it includes both Final Four games and Monday’s national championship.
Or, let’s say you want to watch today’s Final Four games, the women’s national championship tomorrow and the men’s national championship on Monday. Without counting free-trial options, Sling TV is the cheapest way you can watch all of those games. The “Sling Orange” channel package, which comes with both TBS and ESPN, is currently on sale for just $20 for your first month.
If you’re trying to watch the game from outside of the United States, you can use a virtual private network (VPN) to hide your location (via IP address) and stream content from other countries that would otherwise be geo-locked.
NordVPN has a number of really good features, plus it’s easy to use and it doesn’t limit your bandwidth speed. That makes it an excellent choice for sports streaming, plus it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out risk-free.
Or, if you’re looking for some alternatives, we’ve put together a ranking of the best VPN services and compiled a list of the best VPN deals available right now.
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.