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How to Watch the Champions League without TNT Sports
The Short Answer
Every UEFA Champions League (UCL) game is streamed live on tabii in Turkey, which costs just £2.20 per month and has apps for desktop, mobile, and streaming devices. To access the platform from any country, get a compatible VPN, connect to a server in Turkey, and cancel your plan within 30 days to get a full refund.
For the 2024-2025 Champions League, the total number of matches available has increased from 125 to 189.
The problem is that live streams for these matches are only available via expensive subscription packages in the UK, costing £30.99 for TNT Sports (Discovery+) and £8.99 for Prime Video.
These steep subscription fees have led over 8 million adults to use illegal and risky sports streaming websites, which Cybercriminals use as bait to steal personal data.
Research from Avast found a 45% increase in such incidents during UCL matches. We personally found that many popular sites redirected us to phishing scams or other sites containing malware.
For this reason, we decided to search for safe ways to watch Champions League matches that don’t require excessive subscription fees.
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How to Watch the Champions League with a VPN
Simply connect to a VPN server in Turkey, then open the tabii website or app to start streaming.
To save money, take advantage of a VPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee. To continue using it for free after this period, you can either sign up again with a different email address, or switch to a different service.
Using a paid VPN’s refund guarantee is preferable to using a totally free VPN, which have bandwidth limitations that restrict your viewing time, or can’t bypass geo-restrictions.
Here’s how to watch live streams of the 2024-25 Champions League:
- Sign up for a VPN that works with tabii: We recommend PIA VPN, as it always worked with the streaming service in our tests.
- Download the VPN app and sign in: Do this through the website for desktop or through the app store on mobile and streaming devices.
- Connect to a VPN server in Turkey.
- Open tabii and subscribe to a paid plan: Only paid subscriptions offer access to UCL matches, and you can use your local payment method to subscribe.
- Start streaming the match you want to watch: From the home screen, scroll down until the ‘tabii Spor’ section. Every match will be listed there.
- Mute the stream’s audio and access English commentary from FlashScore: Unfortunately, tabii’s commentary is in Turkish, which we found distracting. FlashScore provides English commentary for free, which you can sync up with the video broadcast of the game.
We synced up the live stream from tabii with English commentary from FlashScore.
Why tabii Is the Best UCL Streaming Site
After testing over 30 streaming services from countries around the world, we found tabii to be by far the best Champions League streaming site.
Though we previously recommended watching live matches for free on LiveScore Ireland, M4 Sport, and ServusTV, these platforms have not renewed their broadcasting rights for the 2024-2025 season.
Recently launched by TRT, Turkey’s national broadcaster, tabii offers the best overall experience given its low price.
We successfully subscribed using a UK payment card, and VPNs aren’t mentioned anywhere in its terms of use, so it won’t affect your account if you’re found to be using one.
You can see a summary of the data we collected on the most popular Champions League streaming sites in the table below:
| Streaming Service | IP Address Location | UCL Coverage | Video Resolution | Language | Monthly Subscription Price | Local Payment Method required |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tabii | Turkey | All (189 matches) | 1080p (Full HD) | Turkish | £2.20 | No |
| HRTi | Croatia | 33 Matches | 1080p (Full HD) | Croatian | 100% free | No |
| TNT Sports | UK | 172 Matches | 1080p (Full HD) | English | £30.99 | Yes |
| Prime Video | UK | 17 Matches | 1080p (Full HD) | English | £8.99 | Yes |
| Paramount Plus | US | All (189 matches) | 720p (HD) | English | £4.70 | Yes |
| DAZN | Canada | All (189 matches) | 720p (HD) | English | £17.40 | Yes |
tabii is the only option that broadcasts every single match live for under £3 a month. Many of the completely free options, like HRTi, only broadcast one game per week.
We noticed tabii uses the same video feed as the premium TNT Sports service, but without the expensive subscription fee. Its video feed is also as current as TNT Sports’ and 20 seconds quicker than HRTi. When using the latter, we often found that we saw a spoiler about a key moment in the match while multitasking with social media during a game.
TNT Sports (Discovery+) offers fewer matches than Tabii, yet it costs nearly £30 more.
For the paid-for services, Paramount Plus was the best we used, with a cheap price and excellent analysis by recognizable experts, like Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher. However, you can’t sign up for Paramount Plus US with a non-US payment method, making it difficult to access if you don’t live there.
The Best VPN for Streaming the UCL
Every legal free Champions League streaming site, including tabii, is geo-blocked. With a streaming-optimized VPN, you can spoof your virtual location and access it from anywhere.
Sadly, none of the 100% free VPNs we tested, including Windscribe, Proton VPN, PrivadoVPN, and TunnelBear, offer a free Turkey server. This meant we couldn’t even test accessing tabii with them.
Below is our analysis of the very best VPN we tested to unblock tabii from outside the country.
1. Private Internet Access: The Best VPN for the UCL
Ranked #1 out of 61 VPNs for the Champions League
Private Internet Access is the best VPN for accessing live UCL matches affordably. It always bypassed tabii’s geo-restrictions, and it’s available at a much lower cost than comparable VPN services.
Unblocking tabii
In our testing, PIA consistently unblocked tabii. Unlike our experience with VyprVPN and Mullvad, PIA instantly loaded UCL matches without any buffering issues or drops in FPS.
Private Internet Access unblocked tabii every time.
Though many top VPNs can unblock tabii, PIA differentiates itself by offering more servers in Turkey than any other VPN. For context, PIA has 52 servers in Turkey, while NordVPN has 14 and IPVanish has just 1. This meant we could switch through numerous Turkish IP addresses.
Connection Speeds & Bandwidth
Using the WireGuard protocol, our speed tests revealed a minimal speed loss while connected to far-away PIA servers. We recorded a speed loss of just 14%, meaning our download speeds were always sufficient for Full HD streaming on tabii, requiring around 5Mbps.
Additionally, PIA offers unlimited data. We used the VPN to watch multiple Champions League matches each month without having to worry about using up our allowance.
Interface & Device Compatibility
PIA has apps for desktop, mobile, Apple TV, and other streaming devices, making it easy to access tabii on virtually any platform. Though these apps are less easy to use than alternative VPNs, like ExpressVPN and Surfshark, they are feature-rich.
The inclusion of PIA MACE, an effective ad blocker, allowed us to bypass tabii’s pre-roll ads, which could sometimes take over a minute to complete.
Pricing & Free Access
Private Internet Access is one of the most affordable top VPN services. It significantly undercuts its competitors, costing just $2.03 per month on its cheapest plan.
This is $3 per month less than ExpressVPN and $1 less than NordVPN.
Though it’s not completely free, PIA offers a seven-day free trial on mobile and a 30-day money-back guarantee elsewhere. This allows you to essentially use the service for free, with a straightforward refund process if requested within the first 30 days.
How We Tested VPNs for Watching the UCL
To find the best VPN to access geo-blocked Champions League live streams, we tested 61 options first-hand.
We tried accessing UCL live streams on tabii while connected to dozens of VPNs.
Here are the criteria we took into consideration when ranking these VPNs and how we collected the data on each VPN:
1. Compatibility with tabii
- Test Conducted: Connected to a Turkish VPN server and tried streaming from tabii.
- Why It’s Important: Enables access to Champions League live streams from any location.
- Optimal Result: Successfully unblocks tabii across all Turkish servers.
2. Free-to-Use
- Test Conducted: Searched for VPNs offering a completely free tier, including those with mobile free trials or money-back guarantees.
- Why It’s Important: Maximizes the cost benefits of using a VPN with a free Champions League site rather than a local paid Champions League streaming site.
- Optimal Result: A fully free tier available without the requirement for payment details.
3. Fast Speeds
- Test Conducted: Conducted in-house speed tests to measure the VPN’s download speeds when connecting to far-away servers.
- Why It’s Important: Essential for streaming Champions League matches in Full HD without experiencing buffering or a decrease in frames per second.
- Optimal Result: Less than 10% loss in download speed when connected to international VPN servers.
4. Wide Device Compatibility
- Test Conducted: Installed and tested the VPN’s applications across various devices, focusing on compatibility with desktop, mobile, and Fire TV.
- Why It’s Important: To ensure the VPN can unblock Champions League matches on the viewer’s device of choice, including Firestick.
- Optimal Result: Intuitive and user-friendly applications available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Fire TV.
5. Private Logging Policy & Strong Security Features
- Test Conducted: We thoroughly reviewed the VPNs’ privacy policies and rigorously tested their security features.
- Why It’s Important: Many free VPNs pose privacy risks as some collect and sell user data.
- Optimal Result: Adherence to a strict no-logs policy with advanced encryption, alongside reliable security features such as a kill switch and IP leak protection.
