Every October my search history fills up with New York Road Runners results pages. This week it was the Staten Island Half, which went off in the rain with more than 10,000 finishers and zero television coverage. That is the thing about NYRR: the club stages dozens of races a year, and exactly one of them is a TV event. If you typed "NYRR" into a search bar hoping to watch something, the question you are really asking is how to watch the TCS New York City Marathon, which runs the first Sunday in November. So that is the question I am going to answer properly, with the four options I would actually consider lined up against each other.
The one fact that settles most of this
The marathon is an ESPN production. National coverage runs on ESPN2 from early morning through the elite finishes. The local New York feed is on WABC-TV, Channel 7, which starts earlier and stays on the air longer than the national window. ESPN Deportes carries a Spanish-language call. The ESPN app streams the ESPN2 feed if you can sign in with something. That arrangement has held for more than a decade, so I am comfortable calling it durable, though NYRR posts the official broadcast details on nyrr.org each fall and you should glance at it before race week.
Once you know that, the comparison stops being "which service has the marathon" and becomes "what is the cheapest, least annoying way to get ESPN2 for one Sunday morning, and does anything free get you there." Four honest contenders:
- ESPN Unlimited, ESPN's standalone app plan.
- Sling Orange, the cheapest live-TV bundle with ESPN2.
- YouTube TV, standing in for the full-size bundles (Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, DirecTV Stream all behave about the same here).
- An antenna, which only works if you live within range of Channel 7.
Head-to-head
ESPN Unlimited
ESPN's direct-to-consumer plan launched in 2025 at $29.99 a month and gives you everything on ESPN's linear networks, ESPN2 included, with no cable login. You can cancel after a month. On race morning it is the cleanest experience of the bunch: open the app, find the ESPN2 live tile, done. My one gripe is that live channels sit a couple of taps deeper than they should, and the app nudges you toward highlights first.
One trap worth spelling out. The cheaper $11.99 tier, ESPN Select, is the old ESPN+ with a new name. It does not include the ESPN2 channel feed. I have watched a friend buy it on marathon morning and get nothing but a replay promo. Check the plan name before you pay.
Who it is for: anyone outside the New York market who wants the race and will actually use the rest of the month, say for college football Saturdays or early-season NBA.
Sling Orange
Sling Orange lists around $45.99 a month, and it carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3. On paper that is more than ESPN Unlimited for fewer channels. In practice Sling almost always runs a first-month promotion, often half off, which drops the real cost for a one-race subscriber to roughly $23. Sling also introduced a Day Pass in 2025, about five bucks for 24 hours, which is almost comically well suited to a race that is over by lunch. If the Day Pass is still offered when you read this, it is the cheapest legitimate way to see the marathon from outside New York. Confirm on sling.com, because Sling changes its promo lineup constantly.
The catch: Orange allows one stream at a time. If someone else in the house wants to watch anything else on the same login during the race, you will hear about it.
Who it is for: the person who wants this one race, as cheaply as possible, and does not care about anything else on the service.
YouTube TV and the big bundles
YouTube TV runs $82.99 a month and includes ESPN2 plus your local ABC affiliate. Note the word local. You get the ABC station for the market you live in, so unless you are inside the New York designated market area, you do not get WABC's extended coverage, just the national ESPN2 feed. Unlimited DVR is a genuine perk here. The marathon is a four-hour broadcast and I have never once watched it start to finish live.
I would never sign up for a full bundle just for this. Nobody should. But if you already pay for one, you are set, and the ESPN app will also accept your YouTube TV, Hulu, Fubo or DirecTV Stream login.
Who it is for: people who already subscribe. Full stop.
Antenna
If you live in New York City, Long Island, northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley or southwestern Connecticut, a $25 to $40 indoor antenna pulls in WABC-7 in full HD for free, forever. Channel 7's marathon show is the best one anyway: it starts earlier, runs well past the elite finishes, and the local crew knows the course block by block. In recent years ABC7 has also streamed its coverage free on abc7ny.com and in the ABC7 New York app, which I would check in the final week rather than assume.
Who it is for: anyone within antenna range of Channel 7. This is not close.
The comparison at a glance
| Option | Typical cost | ESPN2 (national) | WABC-7 (local NY) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESPN Unlimited | $29.99/mo, cancel anytime | Yes | No | Out-of-market fans who will use ESPN all month |
| Sling Orange | ~$45.99/mo, promos and Day Pass often far less | Yes | No | One-race viewers on a budget |
| YouTube TV / big bundles | ~$82.99/mo | Yes | Only inside the NY market | People who already subscribe |
| Antenna | One-time $25 to $40 | No | Yes, if in range | Anyone in the NY metro area |
My pick
Two answers, depending on your ZIP code.
Inside the New York market, buy an antenna. You get the better broadcast, it costs nothing after the hardware, and the same antenna gives you ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS for the rest of the year. I keep one plugged into a TV I otherwise never watch live, and marathon Sunday is one of the three or four days a year it earns its spot.
Everywhere else, Sling Orange with a promo or Day Pass is the value play, and ESPN Unlimited is the comfort play. If the only thing you want is the race, go Sling and cancel. If you are going to leave it running through the holidays for football, ESPN Unlimited is the better app and the better deal across a full month.
Skip the big bundles unless you already have one.
What NYRR gives you for free
This is where the Staten Island Half connects back. NYRR's smaller races are not televised, but the club is generous with the stuff that is actually useful if you know a runner.
- Results and live tracking. The free NYRR app and the results pages on nyrr.org let you follow any runner by name or bib on race day and pull up splits afterward. This is how everyone I know "watched" the Staten Island Half this weekend.
- Race recaps. NYRR's YouTube channel posts elite-race highlights within a day or so of its bigger events, and some years it has livestreamed select non-marathon races there or through ESPN platforms. Check the specific event page; it varies by year.
- Marathon replay. ESPN typically makes the ESPN2 broadcast available on demand in the ESPN app after the race for subscribers, which matters if you are in the Sling Day Pass camp and miss the morning.
Race day 2026, as of mid-October
Everything below is time-sensitive; the sections above are not.
The 2026 TCS New York City Marathon is Sunday, November 1. Based on recent years, the professional wheelchair division starts around 8 a.m. Eastern, with the elite women and men following over the next hour and the first finishers in Central Park a little after 10:30. ESPN2 typically joins around 8:30 a.m. ET and stays through the elite finishes; WABC starts earlier and runs deeper into the day. NYRR publishes the final broadcast schedule and any streaming additions at nyrr.org in the last couple of weeks before the race, so treat those times as a sketch, not gospel.
If you are deciding today, the practical move is to do nothing yet. Sling and ESPN both tend to roll out fall promotions, and subscribing on October 31 instead of October 15 saves you half a billing cycle for no loss. Set a reminder, buy the antenna now if you are local, and spend the next two weeks checking results pages like the rest of us.
See you at the first Sunday in November. I will be the one watching the replay with coffee at 2 p.m., pretending I got up for the start.
Marcus
— Marcus Bell