If you don’t have cable or a TV antenna, you’ll need a live TV streaming service to stream matches from the US Open live for free. One option we love is DIRECTV, which comes with five days free and starts at $49.99/month, with plenty of subscription options and genre packs that includes ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC.

That may sound like a lot of fanfare, but ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer service has launched with much less of a circus than a media industry watcher might have expected one, three, even five years ago. That’s because ESPN is releasing a revolutionary new project that it doesn’t really want you to buy.