5 Best VPN for Sport

0
738

Best VPN for Sport: If you’re a sports enthusiast, somethings can compare to spending an evening in front of your H.D. T.V. watching your favorite game munching on bagels. Likewise, you know how frustrating it is to get locked out of your sports streaming subscriptions just because you’re traveling. Why you don’t have to be an Englishman to have a crush on Premier League or French to fancy Tour de France. The love of sports knows no borders.

Why You Need a VPN for Sports

But borders keep interfering with your love of sports, nonetheless. Irrespective of your preferences; be it Formula 1, the Olympics, NFL, WWE, or College Basketball, you most likely want an international mix of sports in your streaming package. The problem is sports is a highly-regulated industry subject to copyright restrictions.

If some tournament is unavailable in your country, the copyright holder hasn’t made a deal with your local broadcasters. That’s when you need a Virtual Private Network to bypass the restriction.

Likewise, you can be in your home country and get locked out of your local sports events. Blackouts occur when a local broadcaster has exclusive rights to live to stream a particular game in your region. That way, your sports streaming channel can not broadcast the game, and you can’t live stream an event featuring your favorite local teams.

A VPN helps you bypass international and local blackouts by assigning you an I.P. address of a country or region where streaming of your favorite sports events is not blocked.

For the record, BestVPN.org does not condone illegal streaming or piracy disguised by VPNs. A VPN is primarily a means of privacy and security protection. Use it wisely and keep out of trouble.

How a VPN Unblocks Sports Streaming

Online cable T.V. subscriptions allow you to access an impressive mix of the U.S., Middle East, European, and international sports streams.

Sling T.V. is a go-to option if you want to access the US TV channels with just one subscription. It comes packed with over 30 channels, including all flavors of ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, NFL Network, Golf Channel, BeIN U.S., and whatnot. Speaking of BeIN Sports, its Middle East repositories offer a fantastic assortment of sports packages, including Bundesliga and the English Premiership. Sky Sports buys you as many sports channels as money can buy while Eurosport is a must-have for many European residents.

The bad news is you can’t access your sports streaming subscription being outside of the country where you bought it. So you get locked out of your Sling T.V. the moment you leave the U.S. soil.

A VPN allows you to pretend like you are in the country where streaming a particular game is permitted. Using a VPN, you can access these and many other sports streaming services, get yourself a subscription and stream as much as you want privately.

Is VPN for Sports Legal?

A VPN in itself is perfectly legal in most countries. Streaming official sports events locked in your region is something you shouldn’t be boasting on your Facebook page, however. Of course, spoofing into the U.S. and buying a Sling T.V. subscription is not as bad as streaming sports on piracy sites. You are paying the copyright holder, after all.

Nonetheless, unblocking geo-blocked sports streams is still a breach of copyright, which can land you a hefty fine in most E.U. countries and the U.S.

With that in mind, you need a trustworthy and secure VPN for sports streaming because you want to keep your online activity private.

How to Choose a VPN for Sports

The catch with a VPN is it routes your traffic through its servers. It means two things for your privacy. First, your traffic is encrypted and hidden from your snooping Internet Service Provider. Second, your VPN could potentially monitor your browsing activity and share that data with law enforcement if compelled.

That is why you want a VPN that doesn’t monitor your online activities. So the first thing to look out for in a VPN is its privacy policies, namely logging.

Logs

Trustworthy VPNs stick to a zero-logs policy, which means they do not monitor your browsing activities or store connection metadata.

Some decent providers log aggregate connection metadata for troubleshooting purposes, or when your subscription is metered or has caps on simultaneous connections. But being decent, such VPNs religiously delete these logs every few hours or days.

Disclosure

Connection logs can potentially be used against you if copyright sharks compel your VPN to hand over your account data, which brings us to the next critical criterion – how a VPN provider protects its users from court orders, copyright trolls, and all that jazz.

Many companies change their jurisdictions to privacy-friendly locations like Romania, Hungary, Seychelles, Hong Kong, or Panama, where they can’t be compelled to disclose customers’ data.

Some companies don’t keep any logs whatsoever. That way, if a zero-logs provider is incorporated in the U.S. and can be compelled to cooperate with law enforcement, it has nothing it could share with authorities in the first place.

Security

Next in line is watertight security to ensure your VPN is not leaking your private data. You want to be looking for a provider that offers OpenVPN protocol with military-grade encryption, typically 256-bit AES complete with DNS leak protection and a kill switch since it’s the optimal configuration that ensures your privacy.

Speed

You need consistently high speeds for streaming live sports events. Otherwise, awkward buffering pauses turn the whole experience into torture.

Established companies with broad server coverage tend to offer superior speeds. Look for the feature called streaming-optimized servers. With servers tagged for streaming, you don’t need to manually look for a server, testing speeds for a dozen locations. Instead, you just pick a streaming-optimized server in a location closest to where you are physically and stream in H.D. without buffering.

Server Locations

Look for a VPN offering ample server coverage in the region into which you want to spoof. You don’t want a VPN with only two servers in Oceania if your goal is to stream Australian sports channels.

Best VPN for Sports

For a complete breakdown of essential VPN features (cross-platform client, ease of use, mobile apps, and more), please read my brief VPN Guide for Beginners.

Without further ado, below is a list of top-notch VPNs that help you stream sports privately.

1. NordVPN

VPN
NordVPN
Location
Panama
Servers
5,800+ in 59 Countries
Price
3.49$/mo
Support
24/7 Live chat
Refund
30 days
Website
  • Double encryption for added security
  • Automatic kill switch
  • A variety of platform support
  • Six simultaneous connections
  • Zero log keeping policy of internet activities
  • 3-Day free trial
Get 57% off NordVPN (drops the price down to $3.49 per month)
(Discount is applied automatically)
(See the NordVPN review for more test results and analysis.)

2. ExpressVPN

VPN
ExpressVPN
Location
British Virgin Islands
Servers
3,000+ in 94 Countries
Price
8.32$/mo
Support
24/7 Live chat
Refund
30 days
Website
  • Unlimited Bandwidth with Ultra Speed
  • Provides all VPN protocols OpenVPN (TCP, UDP), L2TP-IPsec, SSTP, and PPTP
  • Dedicated VPN Apps for Android & iOS
  • High-End Security with OpenVPN 256-bits
  • Zero log keeping policy of internet activities
  • 3 simultaneous connections
Get 35% off ExpressVPN (drops the price down to $8.32 per month)
(Discount is applied automatically)
(See the ExpressVPN review for more test results and analysis.)

3. Surfshark

VPN
Surfshark
Location
British Virgin Islands
Servers
1,700+ in 63+ Countries
Price
2.49$/mo
Support
24/7 Live chat
Refund
30 days
Website
  • AES 256-Bit Network Encryption
  • Chrome Extension Available
  • Kill-Switch functionality
  • A variety of platform support
  • Zero log keeping policy of internet activities
  • Unlimited simultaneous connections
Get 82% off Surfshark (drops the price down to $2.49 per month)
(Discount is applied automatically)
(See the Surfshark review for more test results and analysis.)

4. CyberGhost

VPN
CybberGhostVPN
Location
Bucharest, Romania
Servers
6,200+ in 87+ Countries
Price
2.11$/mo
Support
24/7 Live chat
Refund
45 days
  • Uses AES 256 Encryption
  • Supports OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP
  • DNS & IP Leak Protection
  • Uses 2048 Key & MD5 Authentication
  • Zero log keeping policy of internet activities
  • Up to 7 Simultaneous Connections
Get 84% off CybberGhostVPN (drops the price down to $2.11 per month)
(Discount is applied automatically)
(See the CybberGhostVPN review for more test results and analysis.)

5. Private Internet Access

VPN
Private Internet Access
Location
United States
Servers
3,320+ in 30+ Countries
Price
2.03$/mo
Support
24/7 Live chat
Refund
7 days
  • Offers all Protocols PPTP, OpenVPN and L2TP/IPSec including SOCKS5 Proxy
  • IPv6 Leak Protection & DNS Leak Protection
  • Kill-Switch functionality
  • Encrypted Wi-Fi Protection
  • Zero log keeping policy of internet activities
  • 10 simultaneous connections
Get 83% off PIA (drops the price down to $2.03 per month)
(Discount is applied automatically)
(See the PIA review for more test results and analysis.)

Conclusion

To steer clear of legal complications, you need to monitor news about your VPN provider religiously. If something changes about its privacy policies and enables logging, or changes jurisdiction, or makes it to the headlines for cooperating with authorities, you need to switch providers quickly.

Don’t feel intimidated by the wealth of VPN criteria, technical specs, and features if you are new to VPNs. Your best bet would be to pick a handful of VPNs from the list, read through their full reviews, and test one or two before subscribing to a long-term plan. Fortunately, reputable providers on the list honor their refund policies, so you can run your tests without breaking the bank.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.