Streaming will never compare to seeing a soccer match in Italy in person. But it is awesome that I can watch every single Serie A, Champions League, and Europa League match LIVE and without much fuss thanks to Paramount Plus.
I was happy to subscribe to Paramount+ because, in the past, I had always scrambled to find Italian league soccer games on TV outside of Italy. ESPN satisfied that itch for a couple of years, but it wasn’t guaranteed that every Serie A match would be on every week.
Paramount+ Pros
To be sure, there was never any doubt that I would subscribe to Paramount+. And here are some of the reasons I’m happy I did:
- Carries LIVE Serie A matches — all 380 of them!
- Streams all Champions League and Europa League matches.
- Also carries a lot of other live soccer, including Brazil’s Série A League (Brasileirão), CONCACAF qualifiers, the NWSL, and the Women’s Champions League.
- NFL games, premier college football games, and The Masters, all shown on CBS Sports, are part of the package.
- Includes tons of other programs from CBS, Comedy Central, Smithsonian Channel, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon.
So, yes—I am happy that Paramount+ has made it even easier to watch Serie A.
But I do have a wish list of things I would love to see the app developers address over the rest of this season and during its tenure as the U.S. home for Serie A soccer.
Paramount+ Cons
Paramount+ streams pretty well. I haven’t had too many problems with the service. But sometimes, it doesn’t work as expected. Here are a few things I hope they’ll fix:
- Just clicking on the program doesn’t pause it (like what one might be used to when watching YouTube). You also can’t pause Live TV (as far as I can tell). This is the situation when streaming on a TV with a Firestick or watching on a laptop.
- When a live match ends, and all other analysis has played out, the screen just goes blank. Direct your users to other related programs, Paramount+! I would really like this functionality for watching Serie A games, especially because I have to click out of a game and go back to the menu to find the next one that might be on.
- Paramount+ seems to have a problem with its cache. For example, if I watch a show then turn off the TV and come back later, the app doesn’t open in the home screen but on the program that just ended. And, as mentioned in #2 above, that is often just a blank screen.
- I can’t watch Serie A games in Italian. I had read somewhere that I would be able to stream Serie A games on Paramount+ in either English or Italian, but I have only caught one match that was in Italian—and that was likely because it was such a non-marquee game that CBS Sports didn’t send any English-language announcers to cover it.
Conclusion
I do hate the fact that media has become so fragmented and we have to sign up for all these different apps to watch our favorite shows and teams. But Paramount+ has been worth it for me.
Watch every Serie A match with Paramount Plus!
