Sling’s Day Passes are the answer to my streaming prayers

I cut the cable TV cord just about seven years ago, and I don’t regret the move at all. Through a judicious selection of streaming services—some free, some bundled—I’m able to see most of what I care to. And for the most part, it’s all on my own schedule.

The one pain point has been sports, which remains one of the few things keeping cable TV afloat. Even that’s changing a little bit, as streaming services are picking up coverage of more events. But to have access to everything, I’d have to subscribe to a whole host of packages, and that balloons the cost up to what I was paying for cable way back when. No thank you.

But there’s a solution of sorts when I need a sports fix, especially if there’s a can’t-miss event that I want to watch from the comfort of my own couch instead of at a sports bar or a friend’s house. It’s day passes via Sling’s streaming service.

If you’re not aware, Sling bundles up a bunch of different channels into one of two collections—Orange or Blue—that you can either buy separately or as one. It costs $45/month to buy one or the other or $69 for the whole megillah. That’s a bit steep for my tastes, but last August, Sling introduced a day pass option, where you can pay just $5 for 24-hour’s worth of access to the bundle of your choice.

So in this scenario, if there’s some event I want to watch on ESPN, I fire up the Sling app on my Apple TV, select the event from the schedule and follow the prompts to hand over my $5. (There’s a little extra tacked on for taxes, but the total bill is less than $6.) And that day pass means I don’t just get to watch one event on ESPN—for the next 24 hours I can watch anything on Sling’s Orange tier, which includes channels like the Food Network, TNT, TBS, and more.

I can tell you that Sling day passes work great in practice. I have a New Year’s Day tradition of watching the Rose Bowl game, a by-product of spending some formative years in Southern California. Or at least I had that tradition: the Rose Bowl has moved from free-to-air TV over to cable in recent years, blocking the game from my cord-cutting view.

On this New Year’s Day, though, I bought a Sling day pass, specifically to watch the Rose Bowl game. And because I made my purchase early enough in the day, I also got to watch two additional football games that were airing on ESPN. It was a nice throwback to my cable TV days, only without the big monthly bill.

There are, however, a couple pitfalls to the day pass approach. First, once you make a purchase from Sling, you’ll never be lonely again, as the streaming service will send many entreaties to your mailbox urging you to maybe consider a full monthly subscription. A quick tap of the Unsubscribe button takes care of that problem, though.

A more pertinent issue would be the fact that those day passes can add up pretty quickly if you don’t exercise some restraint. Fortunately, that’s not a problem for me, as my New Year’s Day splurge happened when there was an event I wanted to see at a time when I planned to be home. Maybe there will be similar circumstances later in the year—a World Cup match, maybe, or an NCAA tournament game. But I’m not too worried about racking up day pass charges.

And even there, you’ve got options. In addition to its day passes, Sling also has 3-day ($10) and weekly ($15) options, which can come in handy if there’s a multi-day sporting event on the calendar. I imagine those will get a workout in some corners when March Madness rolls around.

Cord cutting remains tough if you’re a sports fan, particularly if you blanch at the idea of committing to multiple streaming services just to watch your favorite teams. But at least Sling’s day passes give you a little more flexibility when it comes to unwinding with a good game.