How to Watch AFL Games from Overseas

ExpressVPN had struggled with Kayo Sports’ geo-restrictions for several years, but that’s now water over the dam.

Now, all 600 Australian servers access the streaming platform smoothly on all devices.

Streaming speeds are comparable to NordVPN’s, with an internet slowdown of just 17%, even when connecting from far-away regions like Europe.

And connecting to VPN servers was almost instant, with an average wait time of just under three seconds. No other VPN has been able to match this.

An area where ExpressVPN easily beats NordVPN is device compatibility.

While both apps have native apps for all popular devices, ExpressVPN has gone one step further and developed its own app for routers.

Not only will it allow you to use a VPN more easily on devices that don’t support VPN software, like Roku or game consoles, but you can also assign a different IP location to each device on your network.

The router app also gets round ExpressVPN’s device policy, so that you can use the VPN on as many connected devices as you want.

For even quicker setup you can buy ExpressVPN’s own router, Aircove, which has the router app already pre-configured.

Overall, we love ExpressVPN’s more compact and modern-looking apps. The simpler interface is void of distractions and aims to get you connected as quickly as possible.

NordVPN successfully unblocked Kayo Sports and 7plus on every single Australian server we tested.

This sets it apart from alternative VPNs like Surfshark, which occasionally forced us to switch between different servers.

Using NordVPN, the live video stream loaded instantly at every attempt, and we never experienced any buffering or interruptions.

NordVPN has one of the largest server parks in Australia, offering 190 individual endpoints spread across 5 cities.

This wide selection of Australian servers allowed us to get an Australian IP address from either the East or the West coast, and therefore get the fastest streaming speeds possible.

Connecting to an Australian NordVPN server from overseas, we recorded a very low 16% speed loss, and our speeds were always far above the 7.5Mbps required for HD video and the 25Mbps for 4K streaming.

NordVPN’s intuitive apps are available for every major platform, such as Windows, iOS, Android, Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV.

While the apps aren’t as well designed and modern-looking as ExpressVPN’s, particularly on desktop, they are by no means hard to use.

The mobile apps are especially easy to use, primarily because they’re not as cluttered as the PC and Mac counterparts.

We did notice that connecting to Australian servers wasn’t as quick as with ExpressVPN. We’re talking a couple of seconds difference, but it was still noticeable.

And while NordVPN provides a very high degree of device compatibility, it lacks the additional coverage that ExpressVPN and Surfshark offer via the router app and the GPS spoofer, respectively.

Surfshark’s 7-day free trial is one of the best available at the moment: seven days completely free via Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.

Most VPN free trials are only accessible via mobile, which is why Surfshark’s offer is so enticing.

Granted, the VPN’s international speeds aren’t spectacular, with a slowdown of 21% connecting into Australia, but they’re fast enough for good-quality streaming.

While the apps aren’t as smooth or well designed as ExpressVPN’s, they worked rather well for us to watch live games online.

Occasionally, Kayo Sports blocked one of our IP addresses, but the vast majority of Surfshark’s Australian servers bypassed the website’s geo-restrictions.

Alongside its free trial, Surfshark provides another great benefit: a built-in GPS spoofer in its Android app.

The Kayo and 7plus apps use GPS data to determine your device’s location. To get round this, you’d normally have to use a VPN in combination with a separate fake GPS app.

Surfshark’s makes this task so much easier by integrating a GPS spoofing feature within its Android VPN app.

The process requires a number of steps, as we explained earlier in the guide, but it will work to access live streams directly in-app rather than through your mobile browser.