SiriusXM this week announced SiriusXM Sports Pass, a standalone subscription plan that bundles every live game and sports channel the company carries into a single tier priced at $5 per month, or $49 for the year, launching September 1 alongside the start of the college and NFL football seasons.

A single price point for a fragmented sports lineup

The SiriusXM announcement, released from New York, positions Sports Pass as a plan built for what the company calls the fan whose season never ends. According to the announcement, the tier keeps listeners connected to teams, hometown voices and sports conversation by combining SiriusXM's sports audio lineup - previously spread across separate subscription tiers - into one low-priced offering. Subscribers get access to every live game and event SiriusXM carries, along with local sports talk, exclusive sports channels, national sports voices, expert analysis and podcasts.

The pricing structure is direct. New subscribers in the United States can sign up for $5 monthly, or opt for an annual rate of $49, a discount against the monthly-equivalent cost. Sports Pass does not replace SiriusXM's broader subscription plans. According to the announcement, the company's full sports programming lineup will remain available within its existing Platinum, All-Access and Music and Entertainment packages, meaning the new tier functions as an additional, lower-cost entry point rather than a consolidation of what already exists.

That distinction matters for how the offer is likely to be read across the industry. SiriusXM has spent the better part of two years widening its pricing ladder rather than narrowing it. The company introduced a $9.99 monthly music-only plan and, in July 2025, launched SiriusXM Play, an ad-supported tier priced under $7 monthly and aimed at nearly 100 million vehicles. Sports Pass extends that same logic - a narrower content promise at a sharply reduced price - into the sports vertical specifically, rather than across the platform generally.

What the tier includes

Sports Pass carries three distinct content layers, according to the announcement. The first covers live game and event broadcasts: every home and away NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL game; every NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1 race; PGA TOUR events and golf's major championships; WWE Premium Live Events including WrestleMania; soccer matches from the United States and abroad; tennis; and college football, basketball, baseball, softball, hockey and lacrosse.

The second layer consists of exclusive SiriusXM-branded sports channels, a list that spans sixteen named services. These include Mad Dog Sports Radio, SiriusXM NFL Radio, MLB Network Radio, SiriusXM NBA Radio, NHL Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, SiriusXM INDYCAR Nation, F1 on SiriusXM, SiriusXM College Sports Radio, SiriusXM ACC Radio, SiriusXM Big Ten Radio, SiriusXM SEC Radio, SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio, SiriusXM FC, WWE Radio and SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio. The presence of WWE Radio on that list is notable given timing: SiriusXM only activated the dedicated WWE channel on channel 156 five days before this announcement, ahead of its first live event assignment covering SummerSlam on August 1 and 2.

The third layer draws on national sports media brands SiriusXM does not own outright but distributes: ESPN Radio, ESPN Xtra, ESPN Podcasts, Fox Sports on SiriusXM, NBC Sports Radio, Westwood One Sports and VSiN.

Local stations and the Audacy connection

Sports Pass will also include what the announcement describes as the recently announced local Audacy sports stations, a reference to a July 21, 2026 distribution agreement that PPC Land documented in detail at the time. Under that arrangement, 23 Audacy sports stations across 29 U.S. markets are scheduled to join SiriusXM on September 1, the same date Sports Pass becomes available. A further 19 Audacy news and talk stations are set to follow later in 2026, though those fall outside the sports-specific scope of this new tier.

Named stations joining the SiriusXM lineup under the Sports Pass umbrella include WFAN in New York, ESPN LA 710 in Los Angeles, 97.1 The Fan in Los Angeles, 104.3 The Score in Chicago, 95.7 The Game in San Francisco, 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, 95.7 The Fan in Houston, 92.9 The Game in Atlanta, 106.7 The Fan and The Team 980 in Washington, D.C., SportsRadio 94WIP in Philadelphia, WEEI 93.7 in Boston, 104.3 WQAM in Miami, 97.1 The Ticket in Detroit, 97.3 The Fan in San Diego, 105.1 The Fan in Portland, 105.7 The Fan in Baltimore, ESPN 1320 in Sacramento, 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh, 96.5 The Fan in Kansas City, 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland, 105.7 The Fan in Milwaukee, 92.9 ESPN in Memphis and WGR 550 Sports Radio in Buffalo.

A technical caveat runs through the announcement, though it is easy to overlook amid the list of station names. While Sports Pass subscribers get access to every live game and event broadcast both in their vehicle and on the SiriusXM app, certain channels - including some local sports stations and team-specific play-by-play channels - are restricted to app delivery and to vehicles equipped with SiriusXM's newer 360L radios. That same satellite-versus-360L divide shaped PPC Land's earlier coverage of the Audacy deal, where nine of the incoming sports stations reach the full satellite subscriber base while the remaining fourteen require the newer hardware. The distinction stems from a basic infrastructure constraint: satellite spectrum is fixed, so every channel added to that path displaces bandwidth, whereas the internet-streaming component of 360L carries no such ceiling. Sports Pass appears to inherit that same architecture rather than resolve it.

The engagement rationale behind the launch

According to the announcement, sports functions as one of SiriusXM's strongest competitive advantages and an increasingly important driver of subscriber engagement, with more listeners tuning into sports content than at any prior point. The company cited figures from Edison Research's Sports Audio Report 2024 showing that the average U.S. sports fan spends six hours and twenty-six minutes daily listening to audio - over two hours more than the average American's daily audio consumption.

That comparison sits within a broader body of Edison Research measurement that PPC Land has tracked across multiple releases. Edison's Share of Ear program, covered by PPC Land in May 2026, found that Americans aged 13 to 34 spend four hours and thirty minutes with audio daily, ahead of the four hours and three minutes logged by the 35-54 cohort and the three hours and seventeen minutes recorded among Americans 55 and older. Measured against those benchmarks, a sports-fan average exceeding six hours daily represents a meaningfully more engaged segment of the audio audience - precisely the kind of high-frequency listener that a dedicated, lower-priced bundle is designed to retain rather than lose to a competing service or to churn entirely.

"Every new channel, artist performance, live event, and creator collaboration advances our vision for the future of audio: making SiriusXM a home for fandom, where listeners can go deeper into the things they love and feel part of a lasting community," said Jennifer Witz, Chief Executive Officer, SiriusXM, according to the announcement. "SiriusXM Sports Pass brings that vision to life for sports fans by putting every game and event we carry, hometown voices, national personalities and the daily sports conversation into one simple, affordable subscription. No matter who you cheer for or where you listen, it brings you closer to the teams and voices that matter most to you."

Context within SiriusXM's broader strategy

Sports Pass arrives at a moment when SiriusXM has been actively restructuring how it packages and monetizes audio, following a period of sustained subscriber attrition in its core satellite business. The company's Q1 2026 results, reported on April 30 and covered by PPC Land, showed net income rising 20% year-over-year to $245 million on total revenue of $2.09 billion, even as self-pay net subscriber additions remained negative. That earnings report also noted a February 2026 price increase across full-price plans, a move that PPC Land's coverage indicated pushed average revenue per user higher despite contributing to some voluntary churn.

Against that backdrop, a $5 entry-level sports tier reads less as a premium add-on and more as an acquisition instrument - a mechanism for pulling price-sensitive sports fans into the SiriusXM ecosystem at a moment when the core subscriber base continues to contract. The pattern is consistent with commentary SiriusXM Chief Financial Officer Thomas Barry offered during that same earnings period, when the company described its acquisition mix as supporting future rate increases through volume rather than price alone.

The timing also follows a string of content and distribution deals that have expanded SiriusXM's sports and audio footprint over recent months. In April 2026, SiriusXM Media became the exclusive U.S. advertising representative for YouTube audio inventory, a partnership PPC Land reported gives brands guaranteed impressions across 212 million monthly listeners starting this fall. That deal, combined with SiriusXM's existing properties, brought the company's claimed reach to 255 million monthly listeners - the same figure now cited in this announcement's boilerplate description of the company. In July 2026, SiriusXM also secured exclusive advertising rights to the comedy podcast "The Bald and the Beautiful," and separately activated its dedicated WWE Radio channel five days ahead of this Sports Pass announcement.

Sports rights specifically have been a recurring theme in SiriusXM's expansion. The company secured exclusive U.S. Open audio rights in a deal PPC Land covered in June 2025, and later extended into soccer programming with a weekly Serie A show that PPC Land reported on in November 2025. Sports Pass consolidates the commercial logic underlying each of those individual deals - rights and channels accumulated piecemeal over roughly a year and a half - into a single packaged offer aimed squarely at fans who might otherwise access only fragments of that content through terrestrial radio or scattered streaming subscriptions.

Why this matters for media buyers and advertisers

For advertisers and media planners, the significance of Sports Pass lies less in the consumer price point itself and more in what it signals about inventory concentration. A dedicated, lower-cost sports tier gives SiriusXM a cleaner way to identify and count a self-selected, high-engagement sports audience - the kind of audience for which sports advertisers pay a premium, since intent and attention are easier to demonstrate than in general-entertainment audio. Whether Sports Pass subscribers get tracked and reported as a distinct segment within SiriusXM's advertising products remains unclear from the announcement itself; the release does not describe any change to how SiriusXM Media packages or sells advertising against the tier.

The overlapping Audacy station rollout compounds that inventory question. Both the Audacy stations and Sports Pass launch on the same date, September 1, which means media buyers evaluating fourth-quarter sports campaigns will need to account for two structural changes to SiriusXM's addressable footprint simultaneously: a new subscription tier with its own audience profile, and dozens of newly integrated local stations carrying their own historical advertiser relationships and rate cards. How SiriusXM Media reconciles those two additions - whether Sports Pass subscribers become a segment advertisers can target directly, or whether the tier functions purely as a subscriber-acquisition mechanism with no distinct advertising product attached - will likely become clearer only once SiriusXM reports subscriber and advertising figures for the third quarter of 2026, the first full quarter in which Sports Pass will have been live.

There is also a competitive dimension worth noting. A $49 annual sports package undercuts many single-sport streaming add-ons sold by other platforms, though the announcement does not name any competing service, and PPC Land's search of prior coverage found no direct like-for-like comparison published elsewhere on the site. What is documented, by contrast, is that SiriusXM's own U.S. Open rights deal and its expanding sports channel roster have both been framed internally, according to PPC Land's June 2025 reporting, as instruments for subscriber retention and premium advertising inventory - the same dual purpose Sports Pass appears designed to serve, now formalized into a standalone, publicly priced tier.

Timeline

  • June 2025: SiriusXM secures exclusive U.S. Open audio rights, part of a broader sports rights strategy tied to subscriber retention and advertising inventory. Source
  • July 15, 2025: SiriusXM launches SiriusXM Play, its first ad-supported subscription tier, priced under $7 monthly and targeting nearly 100 million vehicles. Source
  • November 2025: SiriusXM launches a weekly Serie A soccer show, extending its sports audio programming into international soccer. Source
  • February 2026: SiriusXM implements a price increase across full-price subscription plans, contributing to higher average revenue per user despite some voluntary churn.
  • April 22, 2026: SiriusXM Media becomes the exclusive U.S. advertising representative for YouTube audio inventory, extending reach to 212 million monthly listeners starting fall 2026. Source
  • April 30, 2026: SiriusXM reports Q1 2026 results, with net income up 20% to $245 million despite negative self-pay net subscriber additions. Source
  • July 21, 2026: SiriusXM and Audacy announce a distribution agreement bringing 23 local sports stations and 19 news and talk stations to SiriusXM starting September 1. Source
  • July 21, 2026: SiriusXM secures exclusive advertising rights to the podcast "The Bald and the Beautiful." Source
  • July 23, 2026: SiriusXM and WWE announce the launch of WWE Radio on channel 156, effective July 27, ahead of SummerSlam coverage on August 1 and 2. Source
  • July 29, 2026: SiriusXM announces SiriusXM Sports Pass, priced at $5 monthly or $49 annually, launching September 1.
  • September 1, 2026: SiriusXM Sports Pass becomes available to new subscribers, coinciding with the launch of 23 Audacy sports stations and the start of the college and NFL football seasons.

Summary

Who: SiriusXM, the North American audio entertainment company that also owns Pandora and operates SiriusXM Media and AdsWizz, announced the new plan. Jennifer Witz, Chief Executive Officer, is quoted in the announcement.

What: SiriusXM Sports Pass, a standalone subscription tier priced at $5 per month or $49 per year, bundles every live game and sports event SiriusXM carries - spanning the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, PGA TOUR, WWE, soccer, tennis and college athletics - alongside sixteen exclusive SiriusXM sports channels, national sports media brands including ESPN Radio and Fox Sports, and local sports stations arriving through SiriusXM's recent Audacy distribution agreement.

When: The plan was announced on July 29, 2026, and becomes available to new subscribers starting September 1, 2026.

Where: The plan launches in the United States, with SiriusXM headquartered in New York.

Why: SiriusXM cited sports as one of its strongest competitive advantages and pointed to Edison Research data showing sports fans average six hours and twenty-six minutes of daily audio listening, well above the general population. The launch follows a period of core subscriber attrition alongside profit growth, and arrives alongside a broader run of sports and podcast rights deals, positioning Sports Pass as a lower-cost entry point designed to capture price-sensitive, high-engagement sports listeners.