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Sports are expensive, of course, that’s something that everyone knows already. But fuboTV is about to make sports even more expensive for its subscribers in New England. It is now raising the RSN fee to $8.99 per month for those in the New England area for NESN and NBC Sports Boston.
fuboTV added this fee last year, as a way to cover the costs added by carrying those two channels, for customers in the region. When it was introduced, it was only $5 per month. Which isn’t too bad. But now, it is nearly 80% more, at $8.99 per month. And this is not an optional fee. So whether you watch sports or not, you’re getting charged another $9.
On the bright side, this is still cheaper than Comcast’s own regional sports fee in the market, which is around $11.85 and recently went up from $10.75.
There are not many streaming options for Boston fans
Unfortunately, if you’re upset by this and want to look elsewhere for a streaming service to watch your favorite Boston and New England teams, well the choices are fuboTV and DIRECTV Stream. And that’s about it. YouTube TV dropped NESN back in October 2020.
DIRECTV STREAM is also quite pricey, as regional sports are not included in its base plan. Meaning that you’ll be paying $85 for these channels, per month. Whereas fuboTV can give you them for $78.98 with the RSN fee included. So fuboTV still might be the better option.
Regional sports have been a real cluster in the past few years. Especially with Sinclair purchasing the Fox RSNs a couple of years ago (when Disney bought Fox and had to divest the sports channels due to it owning ESPN already). But it is only going to get even more confusing when Sinclair launches its own Bally Sports streaming service later this year.
This fee is likely to continue climbing, however, so it’s important to keep that in mind.
