Watching Illegal Streams For Football – Guest Comic by Leon Häfner
So Leon actually sent me two guest comics last week (What a guy), and I didn’t want to leave him hanging, so I decided I’d run this one on football streams today since it’s still peak offseason and we have plenty of time to get to Derek Carr’s addition to the money fort saga and whatever else sorta happened this month. This might be the most boring offseason I think I’ve ever dealt with during my comic making years.
It’s one of those things that has existed for years but nobody really talks about (for obvious reasons). I’m not even sure if I should be bringing it up. I don’t know how prevalent the use of streams actually is. I’d imagine not too high, I don’t think the average football fan has the know-how to go watch a stream without severely messing up their computer. I have some technological know-how in browsing safely and I still do my best to avoid streams because they are sketchy to find and use. Streams are low quality, cut out randomly, and are on very questionable sites so you are getting a very low quality product with a risk of computer cancer. I’ve watched them, but mostly as a last resort kind of thing. A lot more frequently years ago before companies started to embrace streaming. Last year’s Thursday Night Twitter broadcasts were beautiful, please give us more of that. I don’t want to pay for cable, because cable is balls and fuck comcast, so the more options I have the better.
What I’m really curious about is another question aimed at my international readers: Have you watched streams? How do you watch the games? I’d imagine finding a game broadcast is significantly harder outside the US. In fact, most streams I’ve watched have been British ones. That might have something to do with it being easier to run a Brit stream in the US without getting caught, but I honestly have no idea.
As a Korean, it’s maddeningly difficult. Never got to watch football on TV even once(except for the Super Bowl, and even then they didn’t have it on every year) until last season. Didn’t watch streams, only some stuff on Youtube which hardly qualifies as properly watching games. Couldn’t even get that invested into Super Bowls because I had no idea who these guys were or what route these teams took to reach that spot; I remember watching the Peyton vs. Sexy Rexy Super Bowl with what might be seen as apathy towards both teams.
At least, from the 2014 season and onwards one trustworthy site started streaming some of the games, and that was nice, but there were outcries that the site was sinking money into something with no hope of income, and accusations that some of the guys on the top must be NFL nerds. Eugh.
Last season, one of the sports channels FINALLY got deals with ESPN and Fox to broadcast three regular season games a week(one SNF, MNF and TNF game each), and every postseason game including the SB. My father, uncle and I have never been so happy concerning football. Sure, we have no freedom on choosing which games we want to watch, but we’ll take it. Way better stuff than what we had previously. Though it seems there must be a Seahawks fan up there or something; we ended up watching way too many of their games.
PS. My uncle was so, so depressed at seeing his beloved Niners crash down into a dumpster fire. At least my dad’s a casual fan who likes a lot of teams, so he was glad that his Steelers, Cowboys, Packers and Texans all made it into the playoffs. Was a bit unhappy about his 5th team the Bears, though(at least he saw them beat the Vikings and listen to the commentators being all dumbfounded)
interesting you get three games spread… we just get three sunday games
speaking as an australian, we only get three games free a week on free tv, rest are on pay tv which is absurdly expensive… we do get the playoffs though (but we don’t get the coverage before or after the game on free tv)… how many do you guys get a week on free tv?
Only Monday night football is on “paid” channels for us. We have 4 major free networks, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CBS. Fox and CBS broadcast all the Sunday afternoon/evening games. Which game you get depends on where you live. NBC gets Sunday Night Football. ABC technically owns ESPN, but ESPN is paid cable. Thursday night football used to be on cable, but CBS started to air it last year, also with twitter.
So basically, we get all but 1 game for free, but we can only watch 4 games per week (Because we are at the mercy of our broadcast location) off our own TV unless we pay for a “Sunday Ticket” package witch lets us watch every game for a fairly high cost. Or we pay for Redzone, it’s own channel that functions as a highlight reel during Sunday games.
The local broadcast issue is the main reason I always go to a bar with the Sunday Ticket package. I’m not in the Giants local broadcast area during Sunday afternoon games, TV here normally broadcasts the Seahawks. A sports bar here will always have all the games on different TVs so I can just sit and watch the Giants and pay attention to the other games when commercials hit.
When I lived in Arizona I would do the same. I was lucky enough to have a Vikings bar that had awesome beer and a brunch on Sunday (shout out to all my peeps at Four Peaks! Skol!) so I didn’t have to try to stream or get Sunday ticket. If I got desperate, I would stream the local radio station carrying the game. Beats a computer virus.
I was in Israel during the Wild Card round this year, and there was no way I would miss the Giants’ first playoff game in years (although in hindsight I should have). If you’re looking for sites to watch games, there’s a subreddit (r/nflstreams) that posts links to each game.
I used to work for grocery store chain that was recently in the news. People would regularly watch illegal sports streams on the computer in the customer service booth. As you say, the streams are low quality, cut out a lot, and the websites that host them are sketchy as hell. Looking back, I’m surprised that those sites weren’t blocked on the network. They must not have been monitoring network traffic too closely.
As a Dutch NFL fan your only option to watch the game at all are illegal streams. No company here broadcasts any of the games and the german/english channels that do you generally don’t recieve here. I think ESPN america might show some games but last time I checked you needed a cable subscription plus like an extra package to recieve that, and even then they would prioritize baseball over football.
Funny thing is that in 2012 NFL Gamepass was actually free for Dutch viewers. So I could watch that entire season in perfect quality and rewatch the late games (fuck staying up till 5 am to watch two non rival boreball teams play eachother). Sadly this was only a one time thing either because that was the intention or the NFL got mad that people started using Dutch VPN’s to get free gamepass.
If the NFL is serious about growing in Europe they do need to change their gamepass subscription system. As it stands it is just to expensive for anybody but the real die hard fans. I’d create a service that would allow people to rewatch the games during the week for free on demand and just sell european adds to fill up the commercial breaks or something. I mean any profit is better then whatever they’re getting right now.
Streams are the only way I watch; you’re right, the ‘average’ fan likely won’t know where/how to find the good ones, but 3 minutes on Google/Reddit and you can watch any game you want in 720+
When I was at RIT I watched streams whenever I wanted to see a Packers game if it wasn’t nationally broadcasted. Now that I’m living in DC in close proximity to a Packers bar, I just go there instead.
GO TIGERS
The first rule about streams club is you don’t talk about streams club.
Ad blockers and scriptblockers are a must. Also Dave nothing about the SCOTUS ruling in favour of trademarking “disparaging” names?
Arena for week 11/12:
Wk 11 clincher: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLxatORgsVMJUe6wqCctLl5mvH-waPdNab&v=mRb-r_OhoTo
Wk 11 recap: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLxatORgsVMJUe6wqCctLl5mvH-waPdNab¶ms=EAIYATgBSAFYEGILbVJiLXJfT2hvVG9oDg%253D%253D&v=uz0Im5xlMus&mode=NORMAL
My grandpa didn’t get Bright House/Spectrum, so when ever USF would play on the Bright House Sports Network, my mom would just point a computer to the tv and Skype the game to him
Is NFL Gamepass only here on the UK? Yes it’s a bit pricey especially if your team sucks but if you love football it’s the best! you get all the games high quality, and you can watch them whenever you want!
Long time reader, first time commenting. I’m a British fan of the Denver Broncos, and there is a lot of difficulty in following the NFL. When I first saw the NFL, around five years ago, they carried the Sunday night NBC and Monday night ESPN games on free-to-air television, and I used to watch every week. They also carried one of the afternoon Sunday kick offs on BBC Radio Five Live. I was angry when the BBC gave up the rights to the NFL coverage. The coverage is actually worse these days, because now five of the games a week are carried by Sky. If you have game pass and your team’s not the Jaguars or the Browns, you pay through the nose for a service and then have to wait to see the games, because they are blacked out for 48 hours.
When the NFL had audio pass as a separate entity to game pass, it was the best way I could follow the NFL. It cost $11.95 for the whole season and auto renewed for the next season. It was a tenth of the the price of the game pass subscription to follow it. Two years ago, the NFL rolled audio pass into game pass. Meaning I would have to pay £120 or nearly $170 at the time for something that was eleven bucks!!
After that to heck with it. I tried to do the right thing, but the NFL screwed me over. Now, I don’t really watch live games, which is sad. such is the cost of finishing university and not pulling all-nighters and working on Monday morning’s. Highlights just don’t do it.
I did go on an exchange year to Idaho State, and the weekend was football heaven. Wake up, have breakfast on Saturday, watch a Big10 game, watch the college team play in the Holt Arena, watch the SEC game of the week at lunchtime,ACC game in the evening, and then weird shenanigans with whatever PAC12 or Big 12teams were playing on Saturday. Similar with Sunday, wall to wall football from 11am over there.
Interestingly enough, I have MLB at bat, and I can follow my team, just like I did back in the day with audio pass. MLB got it right.
Streams are SUPER easy to come by if you know where to look. Very good quality as well, 720p. I watch via stream often when I’m on the road and want to watch my team instead of whatever local games are on in the city I’m in.
I don’t want to advertise any specific site on here, but there is a *site name* with many sub-*site name*, one of which is dedicated to NFL streams. I used it probably at least twice a month the last 3 seasons and never had a ton of issues with malware, though I would have to jump between streams every once in a while.
I use NFL GamePass. It’s a lot better for international viewers. We get to stream all games live and on-demand (and not just after the game is over like the US version). We get NFL Network and on-demand access to a lot of NFL Films shows. It’s actually really, really good.
It’s a little pricey. Around $250 a year, but it’s definitely worth it.
I mean, you can’t get into trouble for watching the stream, just for broadcasting it, right? Even then it still feels sort of stigmatizing to do this thing and talk about it.
I’m not gonna give away my site of choice, but it definitely has made my life easier when it comes to watching some of my favorite teams. I was able to watch most of the Knicks games last year due to this so I can’t complain.
Watching illegal streams is still illegal. You can still get in trouble for it. The chances are pretty small, however, because more attention will be paid to the provider than the user, kind of like how someone holding some drugs is viewed as a smaller problem than someone dealing the drugs, or how torrenters who seed are in way more danger than those who leech.
Basically I don’t think anyone is in serious trouble just watching a stream but it might get you noticed.
As a brazilian fan, I use NFL Game Pass. Streams down here are as bad as you described…so Game Pass is a must for me (obviously there are lots of good features in it that I like too).
Use an adblocker for Chrome and the reddit streams. -Broke college student
I’m british and watched every browns game for the last two years using live streams online, I’m just hoping it won’t do anything too bad to my laptop. I think the stream is usually of the local cleveland broadcast and the quality is mostly alright, bit fuzzy and a bit juddery but you know what’s going on for the most part. Don’t have any other way to watch so the streams are a godsend
I don’t like using them because of all the popups and the low quality but sometimes there just isn’t any other choice.
I’ve had NFL Ticket and that ends up being worthless because they’ll block access to any game that’s currently being broadcast on TV in your area.
“Well why the hell do you think I paid all that money for internet access NFL?!!! It was to watch the games online because I always have access to my phone but do not always have access to a TV.” (>_<)
As a Brazilian, I have watched almost every single game since 2008 via Streaming. The cable packages that have some NFL games are very expensive, and usually just have 1 or 2 games per Sunday.
ESPN has been broadcasting the Thursday Night, Sunday Night and Monday Night games for a few years now in Brazil, as well as two (or three with the London schedule) extra games on Sunday afternoon. It’s pretty okay if you cheer for the Patriots, Seahawks or Steelers (since almost every week they show those games), but a pretty harsh for other teams. I’m thinking about getting the NFL GamePass this year – it’s expensive, but at least I can watch all Giants games anytime I want.
We here in Austria tend to get some games on TV. German and Austrian TV shows about 2 games a week. Since commentators are really, really bad though I tend to get NFL gamepass each year and simply stream live over gamepass. The low quality streams, I tried them for some time but they can’t beat the quality and convenience of gamepass
I am from Czech republic and sometimes it’s really a pain in the ass to find a proper stream. AdBlock is a must have, I look for streams od Reddit, but many of them are lagging or put down after certain time. A great practice is to favourite a great stream so you can try again next week. But it’s always hard to find a stream for specific game. We have a TV channel that airs games, but the choice of game is sometimes really dissapointing -> so then stream it is. NFL.com Game Pass is kinda expensive and I have a better use for that kind of money.
I pay for game pass. It’s a bit pricey but entirely worth it. The only issue was when the local broadcaster (Sky) had the rights to show a game I was interested in, because then it was blacked out for 24 hours.
I use streams for the games I can’t get with my antenna (so MNF games). Here’s a little tip for people who may try to use streams, if I can explain this properly.
On some stream sites, you may try to watch a game, and a message may pop up saying “just another ad blocker. Please disable Adblock.” and you think you have to disable Adblock to watch the stream, which is obviously not desirable because of the sketchiness of these sites. You don’t actually have to disable Adblock. Those streams have a series of ads in front of the video with Xs to close them. When you click the X of the very top ad, it actually reopens the stream in a new tab. If you can click this top X quickly enough, the new tab opens and the “just another ad blocker” message does not appear. If you’re too slow, refresh and try it again.
The annoying thing about streams is that they always seem to freeze right when the action happens. They’ll run perfectly clear with the players standing around, but then a long bomb pass gets thrown and completed and of course the stream freezes right as the ball leaves the quarterback’s hand. Oh well, can’t really complain when it isn’t legal. Lol.
There’s a few different options if you have a Kodi install. A couple of the bigger ones have gone away, but there’s at least 3 or 4 that all show 720p streams (one of them is a rebroadcast of Sunday Ticket). It’s pretty much the only way I get to see Saints games up here in the great white north.
hey dave, https://np.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/6jarda/ocwhich_teams_have_fewer_fans_than_their_namesake/
this guy compared, frex, the number of actual eagles v. the number of eagles fans
https://np.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/6jarda/ocwhich_teams_have_fewer_fans_than_their_namesake/
this guy calculated (very half-assedly) which teams have more fans than the things the fans are named after. for example: there are more actual falcons in the world than fans of the Atlanta Falcons, the reverse is true of lions and Lions fans.
i was “anonymous”, obvs. it’s not because i was looking at porn in an incognito window and also opened up TDP and therefore wasn’t logged in… it’s not because of that thing i said. it’s something else.
We get NFL GamePass now in Mexico, but for the longest time we only had access to NFL Rewind or whatever games the major sports channels trot out with their horrible commentary on cable. Online streaming may or may not have been used before GamePass was purchased in this Mexican household.
I was on a construction project in Russia a couple years back. They had their IT guy set up a connection on the *outside* of the firewall and had a laptop specifically for streaming sports. Every few weeks it would become so crippled with adware and malware that it would practically stop working. The IT guy would wipe it, restore factory defaults and O/S, then rinse, lather, repeat.