‘Alexa, play the Red Sox game,’ or ‘Alexa, turn on ESPN’ will soon be familiar choices for sports fans who are TuneIn Live subscribers. The company launched TuneIn Live, a premium radio subscription service available only for Amazon Alexa. With TuneIn Live, subscribers can play live broadcasts of MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL games, including play-by-play broadcasts, premium news stations, sports talk stations and more.

The company kicked off the TuneIn Live premium subscription service service in honor of MLB’s opening day on March 29, 2018. To get started, users can say ‘Alexa, open TuneIn Live.’ Following a free seven-day trial, Amazon Prime members can subscribe for $2.99 a month. Non-Prime members can subscribe for $3.99 a month.

‘TuneIn Live brings a delightful experience to Alexa customers with the ability to stream live audio of virtually any sporting event or news broadcast throughout your home,’ said Rob Pulciani, Director, Amazon Alexa, in a news release. ‘Just ask Alexa to open the TuneIn Live skill and play your favorite team’s game – even synchronize playback across multiple Echo devices around the home so the whole family can hear as they move around the house.’

Here are just a few of things Alexa can do with the TuneIn Live skill:

• Ask Alexa what MLB or NHL games are on.
• Ask Alexa to review upcoming team schedules.
• Tell Alexa to play commercial-free news shows like MSNBC, CNBC or Aljazeera.

TuneIn Live will work on the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Spot or Echo Show, and it is sold separately from TuneIn Premium. Subscribers can manage their subscriptions through the Alexa mobile app or via the subscription manager on Amazon.com.

TuneIn offers a free version and features 120,000 radio stations, partner radio stations, on-demand programming and podcasts. TuneIn Premium is available for $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year and features the same radio stations and podcasts, live NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL games and commercial-free music.

According to TuneIn, it has 75 million listeners, listening to more than 400 million hours monthly including sports, news and talk programming. In addition to being available on Alexa-enabled speakers, it is available on more than 200 connected devices and streaming platforms including Google, Cortana, Bose, Roku and Xbox One in over 197 territories across the world.

Insider Take:

With the growing use of intelligent personal assistants like Alexa, this is an exciting opportunity for technology to blend with a subscription. Priced at $3 to $4 a month, this service is very affordable and targeting sports fans is a great place to start, especially given that 82 percent of intelligent personal assistant consumers use their devices to seek information.