5 Of The Best TVs For Watching Sports You Can Buy

• Entertainment
• TVs and Streaming

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The Super Bowl may have already been played, but the rest of the year is still stacked full of sports. The NBA Playoffs, the Stanley Cup, a full summer of baseball, and a soccer World Cup co-hosted by the U.S. are all events that deserve to be watched on a screen that does the action justice. If you're serious about getting a proper TV for sports but you're unsure what to look for, here are a handful of specs and features that are worth understanding first.

The single most common complaint after buying a TV is that it's not big enough — you'll never hear anyone saying it's too big. Fifty-five inches is the minimum worth considering. That said, buying the biggest display doesn't automatically mean you've got the perfect TV. Brightness matters, too — especially when your team kicks off mid-afternoon and sunlight is pouring through the window. A TV that can pump out the nits can handle ambient glare better. 

While there are many tips and tricks to increase your TV's image quality, contrast gives the picture depth, which makes the colors richer and more accurate. This is where OLED TVs with their perfect blacks earn a solid reputation. They're also renowned for their wide viewing angles, which matters when everyone watching is placed across the room. If you do go OLED, make sure it produces enough brightness, or you'll have to draw the curtains. Refresh rate and motion handling are important, too. They determine how cleanly the TV can keep up with the action, while strong upscaling will sort out grainy or unclear cable broadcasts. So, settle in, crack open a cold one, and here's hoping your team shows the same quality as the following TVs do.

Samsung S95F

OLEDs' kryptonite has always been bright rooms. Open the curtains, and the picture washes out. Samsung spent a long time solving this and has shown itself to be one of the top TV brands for picture quality over the years. The S95F is one of its prime examples. Samsung's QD-OLED panel pushes the peak brightness toward 2,200 nits, while the matte anti-glare coating kills the majority of those pesky reflections. This combination means you can watch Sunday afternoon games with the window wide open, and the picture will look exactly as it should. 

But that brightness isn't just about competing with strong daylight. Even as that panel pushes hard, the colors maintain a richness and saturation that means the green of the pitch or the vivid yellow of a tennis ball doesn't fade. What Hi-Fi put it simply when they said that the S95F is "stunningly bright, vibrant, and sharp." The 165Hz refresh rate contributes to that sharpness. Whether it's a winger at full sprint, a 95-mph fastball, or a blistering Serena Williams forehand, this TV tracks the action cleanly without blur. Additionally, the viewing angle is excellent. No matter where you're sitting in the room, the picture holds up. 

The S95F comes in four sizes: 55, 65, 77, and 83 inches, ranging in price from around $2,200 up to $6,000 — although discounts are regular. The QD-OLED panel is the choice on each variant other than the 83-inch, which features a WOLED panel. This helps the larger display to achieve comparable brightness. No matter the size, however, when the crowd noise kicks in, the built-in speakers will start to distort at high volumes, so a soundbar is always worth budgeting for.

TCL QM7K

There aren't an awful lot of TVs that can fill an entire wall and not empty your bank account. The TCL QM7K can. It's one of 2025's most-loved TVs, and at around $2,500 for a 98-inch behemoth, it can turn your living room into a proper big-game venue. TCL states its mini-LED backlight pushes peak brightness up to 3,000 nits in HDR (2,600 nits for the 55- and 65-inch models), while blacks are kept genuinely deep with very little bloom around highlights. Ambient light from lamps and overhead lighting are handled well, so the deep red of an F1 Ferrari will look exactly as it should on screen. That's not to say a window directly opposite won't be noticeable; you'll still have to position the TV accordingly.

If you stream your sports, you'll benefit from the QM7K's ability to iron out the picture breakup that can sometimes appear on heavily compressed streams. On this TV, it's hard to spot, but cable sports are potentially weaker. Lower-resolution sources don't upscale so cleanly. As it isn't an OLED, the viewing angle is another area where this TV asks for some compromise. The picture washes out the farther from the center you sit. It's fine for a few people sitting along a couch, but anyone stuck in the corner of the room won't get the same picture quality. 

However, the 144Hz refresh rate keeps the action smooth, and the TV offers good value across all sizes, from the 55-inch model priced at around $700 up to that high-value 98-inch monster. If you want to take the size even further, there's a 115-inch model available at an eye-watering $9,999. At that size, we're talking as close to being in the stadium as you can get without actually being there.

Sony Bravia 9

The Sony Bravia 9 is one of the best TVs on this list for brightness. RTINGS measured it pushing past 2,500 nits in SDR and almost 2,900 in HDR, so it handles the ambient glare of practically any living room without issue. Wired mentioned that it features "incredible brightness without blasting your eyes," and it doesn't come at the expense of accuracy. Colors pop without looking overcooked, so Messi's Inter Miami pink looks as sharp on screen as it does on the pitch. Sony's image processing provides another reason why this TV is a great choice for sports fans. It keeps cable broadcasts and compressed streams looking clean. If you're watching a low-quality feed, it'll tidy it up without losing detail, and motion is handled well, too, with smoothing that easily irons out fast camera pans on a wide stadium shot.

SlashGear deservedly included the Sony Bravia 9 among 5 of the best TVs in 2025, but if you're hoping for one where everyone in the room gets a good view during a big watch party, you may want to reconsider. The viewing angle is good enough for two or three fairly centered people, but it does start to degrade farther off. The 65-inch model is a solid fit for a medium to large living room and comes in at around $2,000. If you want to go bigger, the 85-inch version is priced at around $3,200, but discounts are often available.

LG C5

For premium OLED performance at a price that might just surprise you, consider the LG C5. At around $1,400 for a 65-inch set (at the time of writing), it offers excellent value from a brand often rated as the world's best. It's not the brightest OLED on the market, but it still pushes out enough nits to handle a lit living room without losing those deep, inky blacks OLED is so famous for. It is worth noting, however, that the smaller 42- and 48-inch models lack LG's Brightness Booster tech, so it's advisable to stick with 55 inches or above and settle for the smaller size if it's primarily for the bedroom.

In addition to those inky blacks, the colors on the LG C5 are rich and natural straight out of the box. So, if you're frantically unpacking to get set up in time for the USA's opening World Cup match, at least you won't need to worry about spending time on calibration — although there are some settings you might want to change immediately after the game. On top of that, the picture stays consistent from every seat in the room thanks to its wide viewing angle. The last watch party arrival will still get a good view, even if they are stuck out by the window.

With a 144Hz native refresh rate, the TV also tracks fast action like a Lewis Hamilton overtake or a Steph Curry crossover cleanly across the screen without blur. And upscaling and low-quality content are smoothed out well — even a heavily compressed cable feed looks detailed. Gamers even say the LG C5 is one of the best TVs for playing Xbox or PlayStation, so you can easily set up your own tournaments once the real action ends.

Sony Bravia A95L

Most TVs from 2023 have been superseded by now. One that hasn't is the Sony Bravia A95L. Its second-generation QD-OLED panel produces some of the most accurate, vibrant colors that you'll find on any TV. What Hi-Fi went as far as calling the color reproduction "a cut above, with the consistency of its skin tones through all lighting conditions proving particularly pleasing." There hardly any dirty screen effect, meaning large areas of uniform color, such as the green of a baseball field, appear even and consistent rather than displaying patchy shades that many other TVs show. 

What's more, the incredibly wide viewing angle allows everyone in the room to enjoy that colorful, detailed picture. It isn't the brightest on this list, but it's still more than capable of handling glare from ambient room lighting, and it does a good job of reducing the intensity of reflections from a lamp or overhead light thanks to the display's effective anti-reflective coating.

The XR OLED Motion tech keeps fast action in check. It ensures things are sharp and blur-free, but the A95L really earns its place on this list with its XR Clear Image and XR 4K Upscaling technologies. They do an impressive job stripping artifacts from heavily compressed streams and lower-quality broadcasts, so a grainy cable feed comes out looking clean and detailed rather than soft and blocky. The regular price of the 55-inch model stands at $2,800, rising to $5,000 for the 77-inch, but as it's a 2023 model, significant discounts are regularly available.

Methodology

We dug through top publications like Popular Science, Business Insider, Wired, Tom's Guide, RTINGS, and SlashGear, of course, looking for models that covered all the key factors needed for watching sports. We looked for TVs that had at least a 120Hz panel, good HD upscaling, strong peak brightness, and wide viewing angles. While most TVs on our list check these boxes, a couple lack the viewing angle or don't handle reflections so well, but these are overcome by sitting centrally or positioning lamps away from the screen. So, if the specs fit your needs and the price is good, get that TV bought and mounted on the wall in time for the next big event. Then all that's left for you to do is get the neighbors invited around and pop the drinks in the fridge.