The selection committees have made their selections and the brackets are established. Another installment of possibly the best sports weekend of the year is about to begin. March Madness or the NCAA basketball tournaments kick off today with two First Four games on the men’s side. Thanks to NCAA partnerships with Warner Bros. Discovery for the men’s tournament and Disney (ESPN) for the women’s, you can stream every game and some will even be available for free. Here’s your guide on how to stream March Madness 2023, from where to watch to when the games start.
When does March Madness start?
Depending on who you ask, the 2023 NCAA Tournament starts on Tuesday or Thursday. On March 14 and 15, the March Madness schedule includes the first four or four “play-in” games. This allows for four more teams to “make the tournament” than if the selection committee only filled the two 16-seed and two 12-seed slots with one school in each spot. Some people argue that the entire event doesn’t really start until Thursday and Friday, March 16 and 17, when Round One officially begins.
No matter which side you land on, the first four games will begin at 6:40 p.m. ET each night on truTV, while Thursday and Friday games will begin at 12:15 p.m. ET, with the first game on CBS. These two days are the busiest and some of the most popular of the tournament, as 16 games are played each. Yes, these are two of the least productive days of the year in the US it is also the most popular time. to schedule a vasectomy. The action continues with the Second Tour on Saturday and Sunday March 18 and 19, before a break until next Thursday. This is when the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds are played over the course of the second four-day weekend of the tournament. The Final Four is scheduled for Saturday, April 1, while the National Championship Game will take place on Monday, April 3.
How to stream the 2022 NCAA Men’s Tournament
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Unlike the regular season, when you need to know which network your team’s conference has a broadcast deal with to find the most games, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has the rights to the entire NCAA Men’s Tournament. This means you’ll be able to watch all 67 games, including the First Four, on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. If you have cable, you’re all set. If you pay for a live TV streaming service like YouTube television either hulu, you are also in good shape. If you don’t have either, don’t worry, you can still watch a good part of the tournament.
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will allow anyone to watch games broadcast by CBS on the web and mobile devices without signing in with a TV provider. Paramount+ users will be able to do the same through that streaming app. If you have your TV plan credentials, you can stream everything through March Madness Live which is available on a large number of devices. You can find it on Android and iOS for mobile and macOS and the web on desktop. For streaming devices, it’s on Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV, Roku, and Xbox, as well as some LG smart TVs.
With some of those home entertainment devices, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will give you a very useful feature. On Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and Xbox One, the March Madness Live app will let you stream two games at once. On the web, however, is where you will find the best option. Starting this year, the broadcaster added the ability to stream up to four games simultaneously. If you opt for the mobile or tablet versions, you’ll get picture-in-picture viewing as you navigate away from the main game. The company also expanded its Fast Break streaming beyond mobile and the web by 2023, adding real-time big-play analysis to its apps for streaming devices, consoles and smart TVs.
NCAA Sports/WBD/CBS Sports
YouTube TV also added multi-view streaming just in time for the tournament, but the platform only offers pre-selected groups – you won’t be able to choose which games you follow on your own right now. The YouTube TV version is only available to select subscribers in early access, but will be available on any smart TV or streaming device that supports the service.
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports also added CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility this year, giving you easy access to live radio broadcasts in the school pickup line. On iOS, the March Madness Live app now supports Live Activities, so you can get live updates right on your lock screen if you have a meeting during a game that interests you.
You can certainly use your cable interface or streaming TV service of choice, but Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has turned March Madness Live into a centralized hub for the tournament. If you have login credentials that give you access to everything, using them will allow you to jump from game to game much faster than scrolling through a guide. And the broadcaster also gives you all the alerts and stats you could ask for, including the ability to easily track your March Madness bracket picks if you completed it on NCAA.com.
Streaming the 2022 NCAA Women’s Tournament
USA TODAY USPW/Reuters
As if a National Championship tournament in March wasn’t enough, the women’s edition takes place at the same time. It is March Madness, after all. The First Four is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, March 15 and 16, and the March Madness program consists of the first and second rounds to be played between Friday, March 17, and Monday, March 20. The Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 will take place again from Friday to Monday, starting on March 24, and the Final Four and National Championship Game are scheduled for March 31 and April 2.
If you notice there are some scheduling differences such that there are only women’s games on Mondays and both the Final Four and the championship fall between the same events for the men. So when the critical moment arrives, you can watch the conclusion of both tournaments live without having to sacrifice viewing of the other.
ESPN has the rights to the NCAA Women’s Tournament, so you can expect games to appear on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPNEWS. The first two of the first four games will air at 7 pm ET and 9 pm ET on ESPNU Wednesday night and the second pair on ESPN2 Thursday night. The first round matchups begin at 11:30 am ET on Fridays and Saturdays on ESPN2, with subsequent games on those days expanding to the other networks.
Again, if you have a cable plan or streaming TV service with Disney sports channels, you’re all set. The best place to watch all the action, however, will be the ESPN app. Here, you’ll get access to a multicast feature that will give you up to four games at once (YouTube TV didn’t specify if it would include women’s games in its multi-view trial). Multicast will be especially useful during the first four days of the tournament when there is a lot of action going on at the same time. However, it is only available on Apple TV and Xbox One.
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