March is often a great month for sports fans. There’s usually a bit of cricket somewhere in the world, we’ve just finished enjoying the one day series between the West Indies and England. It was a bit of a slogfest with some incredible batting performances, and that’s likely to continue with the T20 matches which start on the 5th March, 2019.
This month also sees the climax of the Six nations Rugby, including some potentially great matches like Wales vs Ireland and England vs Scotland both of which may well decide who ends up as champions. The great bonus is that all the Six nations rugby is available on free to air UK TV channels which can be watched in the UK and globally if you use a decent VPN service.
Unfortunately the Formula One Season for 2019 is not now available on public channels after it moved to Sky. However if you have a subscription you can enjoy all the races if you’re in the UK on Sky or you can take a shorter subscription on Now TV. Again if you’re outside the UK somewhere then you can still access them via a subscription but ensure you have a UK IP address first – explained here.
- 5 March: International cricket: West Indies v England 1st T20 – live on Sky Sports and NOW TV
- 5-6 March: Champions League football Round of 16, 2nd leg – live on BT Sport
- 8 March: International cricket: West Indies v England 2nd T20 – live on Sky Sports and NOW TV
- 9 March: Six Nations rugby: Scotland v Wales – live on BBC/ITV
- 9 March: Six Nations rugby: England v Italy – live on BBC/ITV
- 10 March: Six Nations rugby: Ireland v France – live on BBC/ITV
- 10 March: International cricket: West Indies v England 3rd T20 – live on Sky Sports and NOW TV
- 12-13 March: Champions League football Round of 16, 2nd leg – live on BT Sport
- 16-17 March: FA Cup quarter-finals – live on BBC and BT Sport
- 16 March: Six Nations rugby: Italy v France – live on BBC/ITV
- 16 March: Six Nations rugby: Wales v Ireland – live on BBC/ITV
- 16 March: Six Nations rugby: England v Scotland – live on BBC/ITV
- 17 March: Formula 1 2019 season begins – live on Sky Sports and NOW TV
- 21-26 March: Euro 2020 qualifiers – live on ITV, Sky Sports and NOW TV
- 30 March: IAAF World Cross Country Championships — live on BBC1, BBC2 and Red Button
Football fans have lots to look forward too as well. There’s the quarter finals of the Champions league where there are many British teams still left involved although I suspect Manchester United will exit after losing 2-0 to PSG in the first leg. The Premiership is extremely exciting at the moment at the top and bottom, you can watch these every week on a variety of commercial and public channels. However the best roundups and highlights shows which cover all the matches are as always on Match of the Day which you can enjoy abroad too.
Most UK sport can be watched on all sorts of channels if you’re abroad across the world somewhere. However if you want to watch with English commentary and you’re not in the UK then it’s normally best to subscribe to a VPN and watch them online. Don’t worry literally millions of people do it every day (including me) and if you pick a decent VPN service it will be fast and entirely secure too.
Just to summarize
- BBC and all BBC iPlayer archive – Accessible to anyone with a UK IP address (BBC will prompt to confirm you have a UK TV license – but doesn’t check!).
- ITV, Channel 4, 5 – UK commercial, free to air channels accessible to anyone in UK or with a UK VPN program.
- Sky, BT Sport and Now TV – all require a subscription plus you need a UK IP address either local or using a UK VPN service.
If you’re in the UK you’ll just need the relative subscriptions. It’s worth noting that Now TV is great for signing up with less commitment, if you just want to catch certain things. You can get a months or weeks access without signing up for longer, Sky and BT will normally need 12 months at least to get a decent lead. Also it’s quite difficult to get just sports economically as they tend to bundle these in bigger packages, Sky was going to change this though so might be worth checking out.
If you’re not in the UK then none of these will work properly as they require a UK IP address. Even if you’re paying for an expensive Sky Go subscription it won’t work abroad without a UK IP address. This is solved by a few methods but by far the most reliable and popular is to use a VPN service to hide your real location (and pretend you’re in the UK). These work from anywhere but make sure that the VPN is not blocked, is fast enough to stream video and allows you access to plenty of UK servers.
Our favorite is the simple, effective and super fast VPN service called Identity Cloaker. It works form anywhere in the world and is so quick you won’t notice your connection is routed through an extra UK server. I’ve personally been using it for over a decade primarily from Spain, Turkey and Portugal but from loads of other places across the world too!
Here’s how it works –
Test the 10 day trial first so you can see how easy it is to get it working. It’s not complicated and although they deliberately don’t mention anything to with watching UK television on their website – they are experts in this field so can answer all your questions!
Give the 10 day trial of Identity Cloaker a go first which only costs a few Euros.
Click here to Try Out
IDC