How To Stream The 2014 World Cup

The World Cup kicks off on Friday morning, and for once there’s a very clear choice if you want to watch it online. Here’s how to get your soccer fix on the screen of your choice

SBS spent up big to secure all platform broadcast rights for the 2014 FIFA World Cup — which includes online streaming rights for all games.

SBS has a dedicated site for its World Cup streaming efforts which covers off all the coverage, starting with the opening ceremony at 4:00am AEST Friday, and then the first match between Brazil and Croatia.

For fixed-screen folk, SBS is broadcasting the games in the traditional way on SBS ONE and SBS HD, with the exception of concurrent group stage matches. Those will be shown on SBS 2 and then replayed on SBS ONE immediately afterwards.

It’s an interesting case where the online efforts — as long as SBS’ servers don’t melt down from the stress — should actually surpass those of broadcast TV, as SBS is promising every single match streamed with the choice of six different user-selectable camera angles for live streaming and replays. If you reckon you can do better than TV sports directors, this would be your chance.

It seems inevitable — especially given the steep price SBS would have had to pay FIFA and the advertiser commitments it would have on the back of that — that SBS’ streams will be geoblocked.

Remember if you’re a Chrome user and you can’t watch live because of pesky “life” or “work” issues, you can always install the World Cup Spoiler Spoiler plugin to keep your World Cup experience pristine.

World Game [SBS]
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