SI TV Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Disregarded

In case you weren’t aware, Sports Illustrated has a television network that’s available on most devices — SI TV. It’s relatively inexpensive ($4.99), yet hasn’t received a ton of buzz since the initial launch. Slackie Brown paid their five bucks and dove into the channel to see what it’s all about.

Some things are awesome on the network. Life of Lin, a show that follows Jeremy Lin’s rehab, is a great watch and is similar to the Steve Nash/Grantland series (The Finish Line) from 2014. If you plop down for the service, this will be one item that you continue to follow as new episodes pop up.

Another, The Crossover, has found some real footing on the network and is absolutely a highlight. The main reason why it’s a highlight is because it’s current — unlike a lot of other SI TV programs. Hosts Matt Dollinger and Rohan Nadkarni release a new episode every week and regularly have off-beat guests joining them (ie: Memphis Bleek). Like the Jeremy Lin story, this is something you’ll follow if subscribing.

Other solid features to SI TV are the big-name movies they sport (ie: Bull Durham, Eight Men Out) and a few of their documentaries. The most recent doc, We Town, follows a high school basketball team from Westtown that features two future NBA stars (Cam Reddish and Mo Bamba) and is as good a doc as you can find. The production value is solid and the story is compelling. The SI Films portion of their doc series is worth watching but the ones that aren’t produced by them are mostly second-rate titles. And for the not-so-dedicated sports fan, they also have a cutesy show about NFL players and their dogs, and a cooking show called SI Eats.

And while there are other things that certainly pass the time on SI TV, there’s a lot of stuff that needs work or attention.

The biggest issue for SI TV is the vision. As awesome as some of the content is, it’s kind of like there’s no one steering the ship. For example, they have two shows — SI at the Movies and Extra Points — that are nearly identical. Each program has a mixed panel of guests breaking down classic sports movies. What they need to do is just stick with one show and go all in. After all, each program has just ONE episode each.

That brings up another issue which has to do with the vision. Some of the best ideas have been ignored after their initial launch. For example, The Vault — which revisits old articles with the subject and author — is an awesome idea but hasn’t been updated since its first episode months ago.

Overall, they definitely have something here, they just need to commit to it. Maybe some marketing here and there would help. If they took one solid project and just started advertising like crazy, they’d definitely get a blast of subscribers. In my opinion, they missed an opportunity with the recent Jake Locker story they ran on their website. The thing was EXCLUSIVE; no one else had the scoop. Why didn’t they turn it into a 40-minute documentary? Or, at least, flip on a camera and toss it on their The Big Interview series. It just seems like something they could have capitalized on.

Moving forward, ESPN+, at this point, is the better value for the same price. However, if they can get everyone to buy into a single mission at SI TV, they could have something special. We love Sports Illustrated and will always subscribe to the magazine. We want them to succeed, and maybe, SI TV could be the golden ticket.

UPDATE: Per Deadline, SI TV was recently added to fuboTV’s skinny bundle.