Sling’s done a nice job of shaking up the live-TV streaming market with its cheap day passes, which let you access Sling’s Orange bundle—including ESPN—for as brief a period as 24 hours. Now Sling is replacing one of its day-pass options with another that’s even more enticing.
Gone is the Weekend Pass, the $10 Sling pass that gave users the run of Sling Orange over a three-day period from Friday to Sunday. In its place: the Sling 3-Day Pass, which lets you stream Sling Orange channels during any three-day period.
The new 3-Day Pass makes for a smart adjustment to Sling’s overall day-pass concept, which allows streamers to dip into Sling’s collection of live-TV streaming channels for brief time periods than the traditional month.
Among the three day-pass options, the Weekend Pass stuck out as the one with the least flexibility, locking subscribers into the Friday-to-Sunday period, while the $5 one-day and $15 seven-day passes can be activated on any day of the week.
Personally, I love Sling’s day pass concept, as it’s the perfect solution for watching, say, an occasional Monday Night Football game on ESPN without having to cough up for a full month of access.
Sling Orange, which aside from ESPN also includes CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV, and about two-dozen other channels, normally costs $45.99 a month, while competing live-TV streaming services like Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV cost upwards of $83 a month.
Naturally, content providers like Disney and Warner Brothers aren’t happy with Sling’s day passes for the very reason that cord-cutters like me love them. Disney, for example, would rather you sign up for a whole month of Sling Orange—or, even better for them, a full month of its just-launched ESPN Unlimited streaming service, which costs $30 a month.
Both Disney and Warner Bros have filed lawsuits against Sling, claiming that the live-TV streamer breached its contracts with them by rolling out its day passes without any warning, among other claims.
But last month, a federal judge batted away Disney’s request for a preliminary injunction against Sling, while signaling he doubted that Disney’s case against the streamer would succeed in court.
Disney’s lawsuit against Sling is still active, as is Warner Bros’.
This article is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best live TV streaming services.