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Monday, June 9, 2014

How to Stream the 2014 World Cup

How to Stream the 2014 World Cup


The 2014 World Cup starts this week, and if you want to tune in, you have a lot of choices—including streaming from your PC, phone, or set-top box. Here's what you need to know if you're in the US.


If you're outside of the US, you may have other options—so check in with the stations in your country to find out who's broadcasting and streaming.


This year, ESPN will be broadcasting 43 of the games on ESPN, 11 on ESPN2, and 10 on ABC (including the finals on July 13). You can also catch the games in Spanish on Univision channels wher available. See this schedule to find out which games are airing on each channel.


If you want to stream the games, however, you can do so via ESPN3 on your computer or through the WatchESPN app on phones, tablets, and many streaming set-top boxes (including the Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, and as of last week, the Chromecast). However, you'll need to log in with a participating cable provider to watch—so grab your credentials (or borrow a friend's) and punch them in to start watching.


If you don't have cable, you can still watch the 10 ABC games with an over-the-air antenna, but streaming everything is more difficult. You can stream the games from another country with Hola (such as the UK streams on BBC and iTV), or you could tune in to an unofficial American stream on sites like FirstRow Sports.


Note that these more dubious methods will likely produce lower quality video and are not guaranteed to work, so your best bet is to borrow cable credentials from a friend. Offer to pay part of their cable bill for the month and I'm sure they'd be overjoyed to help you out. If that doesn't work, you can always head to a nearby bar and get a beer flight out of the deal.


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