Watch Blackout Nfl Games
If you want to watch live NFL legally in the UK, there are two choices: subscribe to Game Pass or Sky Sports.
Sep 10, 2018 If blackouts are ruining your football watching experience, one great solution is to use an NFL Game Pass International package with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The trick is to use a VPN to access a server where blackouts don’t apply. The National Football League television blackout policies are the strictest television blackout policies among the four major professional sports leagues in North America. From 1973 through 2014, the NFL maintained a blackout policy that stated that a home game cannot be televised in the team's local market if 85% of the tickets are not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time.
Both have their critics, but if you want to see almost every game, there is only one choice: get Game Pass.
NFL Game Pass is only available to users located inside Europe. Additional blackout restrictions apply in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Blacked-out games will be made available on demand in the NFL Game Pass archives 24 hours after their original telecast. Game broadcasts and content included in the service are available only in English. How to hack NFL Game Pass to bypass blackouts. It includes everything you’ll ever need to catch every single live game easily with tools such as the NFL RedZone and NFL Network 24/7. In retrospect, the Game Pass (International) seems to be designed for non U.S residents. Since the NFL games aren’t available through their local television stations. Removing NFL Blackout Restrictions. Typically NFL games are not blacked out because they are on network television, which is free to anyone with an over-the-air antenna. However, if the New England Patriots game is on ESPN, NFL Network or is blacked out for attendance reasons, you can still watch it, albeit with a little bit of work involved.
At £139.99 for a ‘Season Pro’ annual subscription (the restrictive ‘Season Essential’ is not a sensible option even at a cut-price £84.99), the official video streaming service of the NFL allows you to watch in HD on any device.
The revamped Game Pass allows NFL fans to watch the vast majority of games live
During games, there are statistics galore for the fantasy nut (or even for the old-fashioned fan), as well as full DVR. That means you can go back in time at any moment to re-watch key plays of the game, both during live broadcasts and on-demand.
You also see full American coverage of games - yes, including the multiple fast food adverts - meaning there is the chance to follow the fortune-teller-esque antics of new CBS analyst Tony Romo.
For those who have responsibilities and may not have the luxury of watching sport at silly hours, the option to see 40-minute condensed games may be a godsend come Friday, Monday or Tuesday mornings.
Also included in the annual subscription is access to RedZone, the seven-hour Sunday night bonanza which sees preened presenter Scott Hanson guide viewers through every touchdown, without so much as a commercial break.
The screening service allows subscribers to pause and rewind play during games
With NFL Network on tap, feel free to tune in to Good Morning Football, NFL Total Access or NFL Playbook, while Coaches Films offer the chance to analyse every play from camera angles used by NFL coaches, scouts and game officials.
There is also a multitude of archive film, some of it quite magnificent.
A raft of NFL Films are at the touch of a touchscreen, as are behind-the-scenes gems like Hard Knocks and All or Nothing and a library of A Football Life.
With Super Bowl archives and game archives, there is a lot to look at. There is even a stash of the BBC’s highlights and preview shows.
Marshawn Lynch (centre) returned to the NFL after a season's hiatus with his beloved Oakland
Sounds great, doesn't it? Well yes, but there are caveats. None bigger than the cursed blackout.
Sky Sports show two games on Sunday night, and despite paying to see 'All*' live games per week (note the asterisk), Game Pass subscribers can't see them for 24 hours after their conclusion. If there's a bigger scandal in sports broadcasting, I'm yet to see it.
So bear this in mind if you want to see each and every down of your chosen team.
There can be issues while streaming games. In the experience of the past two weeks, it is remedied by a reboot, but it is an irk nevertheless.
These Green Bay fans may regret not watching their team at home after losing in Atlanta
Nfl Game Pass Blackout
In its previous guise, archive material has stretched back five years. This latest version sees them cut short at two.
Long-time Game Pass subscribers will be equally annoyed at the £10 price hike, not to mention last year's 'annual' subscription ending abruptly in June.
So the new-fangled Game Pass is not perfect, far from it. But whether you are a long-time NFL fan or a newcomer keen to get to know the game, then the service does enough to justify its price tag.
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Fall is on its way, which can mean only one thing: football is back! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could watch whatever NFL game you want without being subject to the whims of your local cable company, though?
How NFL Streaming Works in the US (and Why It Sucks)
Obviously, if you have access to a cable subscriber’s username and password, you can stream the games from WatchESPN, Fox Sports Go, and NBC Sports. DirectTV subscribers can get NFL Sunday Ticket, as long as you pay an extra $199 ($49.99/month) in addition to what you’re already paying for the satellite service (at least $50/month).
One other option is Amazon’s recently announced partnership with the NFL to stream sone of the games. Unfortunately, this option will only give you a small taste rather than the whole smorgasboard.
RELATED:How to Get HD TV Channels for Free (Without Paying for Cable)
But if you’re reading this article, it’s probably because you don’t have a cable provider (or a friend who’ll let you borrow their password). You can watch a fair amount of games with an over-the-air antenna, but not all of them.
If you’re an avid football fan, though, the NFL offers a subscriber service called Game Pass, which is $99.99 in the US and lets you stream NFL games.
Seems like a pretty good deal until you look at the details. You can’t actually watch live regular season games. Instead, you have to wait until they’re over and watch their replay.
Nobody wants to wait until games over before you can watch them–hushing your friends not to reveal the score, staying off the Internet and social media–that’s no fun.
Unfortunately, those are your only options. The NFL does not offer a way to stream live games in the US with Game Pass, making that $99 “deal” pretty lame. Thankfully, there is a better option.
The Better Option: Watch International Streams with a VPN
Sure, there are probably pirated streams out there, but we can’t endorse them. Not only are they illegal, of course, but they’re typically terrible quality–laggy and stuttery–and highly subject to takedowns during the middle of the broadcast. That’s even more annoying than watching games on replay.
Here’s what we recommend. NFL Game Pass also offers an international option for those outside the US–and that plan can stream games live, all season long. It only allows users outside the US, but there’s a way around that: you can subscribe to the international Game Pass package, and use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or SmartDNS to spoof your computer’s location.
If you’re in the US, you can also use a VPN to subscribe to an international Game Pass plan. Right now, plans in many areas of Southeast Asia are running $124—nearly $75 cheaper than the regular $199 price.
How This Works
RELATED:How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs
If you don’t already have a VPN, we suggest you do a little research on one. The concept is simple: a VPN routes all your traffic through servers in another location (say, Europe), so you appear to be browsing from that location. They have far-reaching benefits beyond mere football (such as being able to watch blacked-out sporting events in your area). You can typically find a VPN for a few dollars a month, and they end up paying for themselves over the short term.
We recommend ExpressVPN for its great speeds and ease of use, though if you prefer something with lots of advanced options, StrongVPN is great for power users. But any VPN that has servers outside the US should work for NFL streaming.
You’ll still have to pay for Game Pass (or try their 7-day free trial) and while it’s not cheap, it’s still less than paying for satellite television, Internet, and NFL Sunday Ticket. And, it grants you access to all 256 regular season live broadcasts, the playoffs, and the Super Bowl. That’s a small price to pay for reliable, live NFL streaming.
If that doesn’t fully strike your fancy, consider these extra goodies you get in addition to all that football:
How to Set It Up
Freestyle soccer ball. Alright, so you’re ready to bite the bullet and sign up for the international version of Game Pass. Here’s how to do it if you’re a US resident.
First, make sure you’re using connected to your VPN or SmartDNS in another country. That means start up your VPN app (either on your computer or your phone), choose a server outside the US, and connect. For our purposes, we connected to a server in Europe.
(You may want to try it from a few different countries, since the price will vary somewhat—and when converted to US dollars, may cost more in some countries than others!)
Next, connect to the Game Pass site. If you’re shown the US version, then try connecting to it in your browser’s private mode. You should see the international version, shown below.
To change the package price to US Dollars, use the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner.
Finally, go ahead and select the Game Pass package and plug in your pertinent user information.
Don’t worry about using a credit card with a US address. Game Pass accepts any credit card, even for the international version, with no problems.
Once you’ve signed up and paid, you’re all set!
Now, as long as you are connected to your VPN in another country, you can watch all 256 regular season games in streaming HD as well as all playoff games and the Super Bowl!
There are a few things you need to remember.
First, whenever you want to watch your games, you have to connect to your VPN so it appears you’re overseas. Also, if you want to watch games on your favorite device, that device will also need to be able to connect to your VPN. A lot of VPNs have clients for iOS and Android, so this may or may not be an issue.
Nfl Network Blackout Games
If you find that the stream isn’t as good quality as you’d like, try a different VPN server in the same country (or even a different one). Some VPN servers may have better speeds than others. Once you find one that works well, remember it for next time.
And lastly, if you want to watch the game on your TV and you own a Google Chromecast, then you can simply cast the game from your browser or phone.
Hopefully this will satisfy your NFL craving. All told, while $199 (plus the cost of your VPN) may seem like a lot, we think it beats being subject to the whims of broadcast television, paying for DirectTV + NFL Sunday Ticket, or watching a terrible pirated stream.
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