YouTube TV just killed Fubo TV

Summary

YouTube TV is expanding its multiview feature to include non-sports channels, challenging Fubo’s main selling point.
Fubo is struggling to compete as YouTube TV closes the gap in price and features, with better quality streaming.
Fubo’s future seems uncertain, but being acquired by Disney may provide a lifeline for the service to merge with Hulu + Live TV.

There are plenty of cable alternatives available, but a few of them reign above the others. For a lot of people, the main competitors are YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Fubo TV. I tried all three of them, and each of them has something to like. Fubo is the one with the least name recognition, but it has a lot going for it. The major thing that comes to mind for me is its multi-stream ability. You can select up to four channels at once and have them all play together on the same screen. YouTube TV has a similar option, but it’s only available for sports, and YouTube picks the channels for you. However, all of that is changing.

YouTube announced in a blog post that multiview is growing to include non-sports content, and it’ll start to include other channels in the coming months. That’s bad news for Fubo as that’s one of the main things that separates it from YouTube TV. If YouTube gets the same feature, it wipes out my biggest reason for signing up for Fubo in the first place. In my eyes, this is a death blow, and it’ll be very hard for Fubo to ever recover from it.

fuboTV

Simultaneous streams: 10
Originals: No
Live TV: Yes
Price: Starts at $80
Free trial: Yes, 7 days

If you switched to Fubo because it was cheaper than YouTube TV, I’ve got bad news

Fubo’s major advantage is being wiped out.

Fubo has a steep hill to climb

It isn’t easy to do

Fubo TV/Apple

Prior to this announcement, Fubo was in a nice position by offering not only the multiview, but access to regional sports networks. The sports networks arrived at an additional charge, but it was nice to have it all integrated without needing a separate app like you do with YouTube TV. On top of that, the price used to be cheaper than YouTube TV, so there were a lot of factors working against YouTube.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the gap has closed significantly. Fubo is losing its exclusivity on the multiview feature and its price is higher than YouTube TV. I also found that Fubo typically streams at a lower quality than YouTube, so I’m not exactly sure who the service is meant to be for at this point. The good news for Fubo is that it was bought by Disney and looks like it’ll be merging with Hulu + Live TV in some way in the future. Without that purchase, I just don’t see how Fubo could’ve survived in the streaming landscape.

People often complain about YouTube TV’s price, but it might very well be the best service available today. When price is taken out of the equation, and in this case, when it’s even cheaper than some of its competition, it becomes a no-brainer. Sure, it feels like the price could rise at any point in the future, but that’s true of all the streamers. When YouTube TV raised its price to close out 2024, Fubo was cheaper, but it didn’t take long for the prices of that service to rise too. It feels like we’re now to the point where these live TV streamers are the same price as cable, but that’s a conversation for another day. At the very least, we’re still able to watch TV without a box, and we can cancel our service at any time.

5 reasons YouTube TV didn’t work for me (and what I learned after canceling it)

YouTube TV didn’t make the cut for me, especially after it went up $10 in December. Here’s why.

What does Fubo do better than YouTube TV?

Not all that much from my point of view

Pocket-lint / Glenn Carstens-Peters / unsplash

With this upcoming update to YouTube TV, I’m forced to step back and ask myself a simple question — what does Fubo do better than YouTube? It’s a tough one to answer because I honestly can’t think of much. Unless you’re somebody who just has reservations about using something owned by Google, I can’t find much of a reason to not just stick with YouTube TV.

When the price was lower, I could put up with the lower quality and fewer channels, but with the prices the way they are now, it’s not an option anymore. Even if the prices were the exact same, I’d give the edge to YouTube nowadays. I know I’m not alone, and I wish Fubo could be more competitive here. What Fubo does offer, which is very nice, is a good price to get people into the ecosystem. You get $20 off the first month after your free trial, so you can save money for a month at least if you want to leave YouTube TV behind for a month. I did that, but it wasn’t enough to make me a convert, and that was before the price changed.

At the end of the day, I like Fubo, and it’s a fine service. The biggest issue it has is that other services exist that do what it does better. Hulu + Live TV comes bundled with Hulu for a cheaper price, and it has better picture quality, so those are two services I can think of that are better than Fubo. When you broaden your horizons and rope in Sling TV, that’s where Fubo can start to flex some of its features. Then again, Sling TV is far cheaper and isn’t necessarily targeting the same audience as Fubo is. Fubo is in a weird middle area, and it looks like things are going to keep on getting worse for them. Luckily, there is a safety net waiting in the event of a failure.

YouTube TV is so expensive now it’s cheaper to un-cut the cord

Streaming is getting too expensive and services need to hear about it.

Fubo was saved by Hulu

Right time, right place

Hulu

Back in January, Disney acquired Fubo, and to the average person, that might seem like a strange decision. On its face, Hulu + Live TV was already a Disney property, so what was the point of snatching up Fubo too? Down the line, it seems like merging would be the best option, and the two services can take the best of both worlds. For example, Hulu + Live TV would greatly benefit from the multiview functionality, and it’d be nice to see the regional sports networks baked into the service too.

Even if the prices were the exact same, I’d give the edge to YouTube nowadays

For the time being, the two services will remain separate, but it’s hard to imagine that being the case because there’s not exactly a need for two different services like this. That’s especially the case if Fubo continues to lose features to the competition. Luckily, it’s not as big of a deal now that they have Disney to fall back on.