March Madness live stream 2024: Watch every Sweet 16 game

With the always-thrilling first weekend of the NCAA tournament in the books, we now move from quantity to quality. As we get ready for the Sweet 16, each matchup from here on out will be of the must-watch variety. Just four wins sit between the remaining schools and a national championship, so you know there are plenty of huge moments on the way.

There are 12 games this weekend—eight Sweet 16 matchups on Thursday and Friday, and then four Elite 8 contests on Saturday and Sunday. They’ll all be televised on either CBS, TBS, TNT or truTV. Fortunately, if you don’t have cable, there are a bevy of options for watching the Big Dance for free or cheap.

Is There a Free March Madness Live Stream?

Though there isn’t a single streaming service that will get you all of the remaining games for free, there are some different ways to watch certain selections of games at no cost.

Both YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” package or above) include all of the channels you need to watch every tournament game–CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV. They also both come with a free five-day trial.

That means that if you sign up for YouTube TV on Thursday, you could watch all of the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games and then cancel your subscription before paying anything. Then, the following Saturday, you can sign up for DirecTV Stream and watch the Final Four (Saturday) and national championship (Monday) and then cancel before your free trial runs out.

So, if you haven’t already used either of those free trials, that’s every remaining game of the tournament at no cost.

If there happens to be one single matchup that you really don’t want to miss–perhaps UConn vs San Diego State, UNC vs Alabama or Purdue vs Gonzaga–and you don’t really care about watching anything else, you can watch one game for free via the March Madness Live app/website. While this option actually has every game, you need to sign in to a cable provider to watch them all. If you don’t have that, though, you get three unrestricted hours before needing to sign in, giving you enough time to watch a single game at no cost.

Other Ways to Watch March Madness Live Stream for Cheap

If you don’t want to worry about the stress of free trials and timing when to sign up and cancel, the combination of Max (formerly HBO Max) and Paramount+ is the cheapest way to watch every game from the Sweet 16 through the final.

Max is just $10 per month and will have a live stream of every truTV, TBS and TNT game, while Paramount+ with SHOWTIME is $12 per month and will get you access to every CBS game. You’ll need to cycle between two apps, but getting each of the last 15 games of the tournament for just $22 is quite the value.

For another relatively inexpensive option, you can go with Sling TV‘s “Sling Orange” plus “Entertainment Extra” bundle, which is on sale for just $41 for your first month. This includes truTV, TBS and TNT and 35 other channels. It doesn’t have CBS, so you’ll need to combine it with the aforementioned Paramount+ option for those games, but even with both of those combined, it’s still much cheaper than any other live-TV streaming service that has all four of those channels.

How to Watch March Madness Live Stream from Abroad

If you want to access one of those streaming services from outside of the United States, a virtual private network (VPN) can hide your IP address and get you around any location-restrictions that stand in your way.

NordVPN is our recommendation. It doesn’t limit bandwidth speeds, it has over 2,000 servers in the United States and it has a dedicated Chrome extension, all things that make it one of the most reliable VPN’s for streaming sports on any service.

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