For more than 30 years, Discovery Channel has celebrated the ocean's most impressive predators with a week to call their own. Shark Week is your source for all things shark, from classic nature documentaries to edge-of-your-seat reality TV. But cable can take a “Jaws”-sized bite out of your entertainment budget. If you don't have cable, how will you catch all of the action? No worries: We're here to show you how to watch Shark Week without cable.
How to Watch Shark Week Without Cable
To get by as a cord-cutter without getting bored to death, you'll need some top-notch streaming services. Among the streaming services that cord-cutters rely on are so-called “skinny bundles,” or live TV streaming services. These services work sort of like cable, only with a few key differences. Among those differences: Skinny bundles stream online, not via old-school cable infrastructure. Skinny bundles charge month-to-month and never lock viewers into mandatory long-term contracts. And skinny bundles work on tons of different devices, meaning you can watch your favorite stuff anytime, anywhere.
Naturally, the channel we want in our skinny bundle for Shark Week is the Discovery Channel (sometimes branded as just “Discovery”). A few of our favorite skinny bundles make excellent ways to watch Shark Week online, with no cable required. Here are our top picks.
Affordable bundles from Philo make it easy to watch Shark Week without taking an excessive chomp out of your budget. Philo has designed its bundles to exclude sports networks, which allows it to offer prices that are even better than its competition. Check out our Philo review to learn more about this service.
Hulu's live TV streaming service, Hulu + Live TV, includes Discovery Channel. On top of that, Hulu's live TV bundle includes access to the on-demand service, which means that you can stream shark-related content and more from Discovery (as well as rival studios and channels) whenever you please. You'll have to wait a bit for programming to hit the on-demand selection, though, so be sure to opt for the live TV bundle if you want to catch Shark Week in real time. For more on Hulu and all of its bundles and features, check out our Hulu + Live TV review.
fuboTV’s livestream of Discovery Channel makes it a great choice for Shark Week. This service is also especially good for sports fans — though we don’t think the event is an official sport, at least not yet.
Sling TV is a skinny bundle that focuses on à la carte offerings. You'll have to start with a base bundle (or two), but after that you'll be free to add (or not add) some of Sling TV's small add-on bundles. This gives you more control over the bundle that you pay for, allowing you to avoid channels you don't want while securing the ones that you do. If you love Shark Week but don't want to pay for a bunch of channels that you won't watch, then you should consider Sling TV.
YouTube TV
Google's live TV streaming service offers a Discovery Channel livestream, which makes it a great choice for fans of Shark Week and all of the other good documentary and reality programming that the network airs all year long. Our YouTube TV review has more details.
Discovery Plus
Yes, Discovery has its own streaming service now. This service launched in early 2021, and while it doesn’t include a livestream of the linear Discovery Channel, it does include lots of Shark Week content. So this is another worthy option when you’re searching for it without cable.
Can I watch Shark Week on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Chromecast?
For cord-cutters, great devices are just as important as great streaming services. Happily, the streaming services we listed above get along great with the major streaming platforms we recommend. Check out the chart below.
| Roku | Fire TV | Apple TV | Android TV | Chromecast | iOS | Android | Web/ browser |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hulu + Live TV | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| fuboTV | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sling TV | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Youtube TV | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Discovery Plus is not on the chart, but you’ll find it works with all the listed platforms.
More to Chew on for Shark Week Fans
Shark Week spotlights the natural world, although there’s a lot more to nature than just apex predators. Apex predators are definitely important, though; otherwise, they’d be farther down the food chain. If you want to take a look at the natural world through the lens of something besides Shark Week, this section has a couple of suggestions.
National Geographic is one option. Sometimes shortened to Nat Geo TV, you’ll find shows like “Running Wild with Bear Grylls” and “Race to the Center of the Earth” on this channel. It allows you to see the extremes of nature without ever going outside. We do, however, encourage you to go outside occasionally, as long as you’re not planning on making friends with a shark. Anyway, if National Geographic seems like something you’d like, check out our guide to watching National Geographic without cable for more.
Another option is The Weather Channel. Just don’t sleep on it, though: If you put it on while you’re falling asleep, you might awaken to the sound of a tornado warning in your area, and that’s an unpleasant way to get up in general. But The Weather Channel offers fascinating shows about extreme weather events right alongside all the usual forecasts. Our guide to watching The Weather Channel without cable has additional details.