How to listen to AM radio broadcasts on your smart speakers, even NFL blackout games

On our most recent IoT Podcast, Keith called in to the voicemail hotline asking about AM radio broadcasts in the smart home. He wants to hear his local AM station’s play-by-play coverage of NFL games on his Amazon and Google smart speakers, preferably throughout the home. So he’s wondering: Is there a Bluetooth radio product that would work.

We researched several Bluetooth radios but kept running into the same brick wall: These products use Bluetooth to accept audio for playback, not for streaming radio content to other Bluetooth devices.

However, Keith still has an option to hear football games, presumably on AM 620 where he lives in Arizona to hear the Cardinals. Yes, even though I live in Pennsylvania, I’ve been a Cardinals fan for 30+ years and know the local area well. Go Big Red!

Keith has previously used mobile apps to stream AM radio, only to find out that the local team’s games are blacked out. However, in 2015 the NFL partnered with TuneIn radio to stream all NFL games. And paying customers with a TuneIn Premium subscription should be able to hear the blacked-out broadcasts as well based on our research. Another option might be SiriusXM, which also has channels for each NFL game and works with smart speakers.

Granted, the TuneIn Premium subscription costs $9.99 a month and SiriusXM can cost even more. However, Keith could just be a subscriber for a few months during the NFL season and then unsubscribe if he’s not getting any additional value from the service.

TuneIn is supported on both Amazon Echo and Google Nest smart speakers, so any broadcast content from it is playable. And because the broadcast is streamed over Wi-Fi, it can be heard on multiple speakers simultaneously throughout the house.

To hear Keith’s question in full, as well as our discussion, tune in to the IoT Podcast below: