TV stations in most countries of the world show the games live but there might be some countries where not all games are shown, or where a pay-tv station broadcasts the football games. Watching the Fifa world cup online can also be the last resort for users who do not have access to a TV which is the case for most work environments for instance.

The following guide explains how to watch the world cup online. Streaming media has bandwidth requirements. A broadband Internet connection is recommended to view the sports event online.

Step 1: Finding out which channels and programs are needed

Each world cup match is broadcasted in several channels which are accessible in various freely available programs. That sounds complicated at first but it is not the case. The best website to get a match listing is MyP2P which is offering all the information needed to find the game, channel and program. The website lists all of the games on their overview pages.

world cup online

A click on the TV icon at the right of each match will open the page for that match listing all TV channels and programs that are broadcasting it live on the Internet.

watch world cup

Channels are displayed with the language of the commentary, signal quality, bitrate and program needed to watch. It is recommended to find a native TV channel first and fall back to the always working Chinese channels if none of the native ones work. Here is a list of programs that are often needed to view live football.

TV Streaming programs

• Streamtorrent
• TVAnts
• Sopcast
• Veetle

Some broadcasts can be watched in Windows Media Player, embedded on websites or in other media players. Some will not be working properly, if that is the case just switch to another station.

Each MyP2P station listing offers a Play link. Clicking on that link will either load the TV channel in the installed software program, media player or on another website where the stream is embedded. It is highly recommended to install the program before clicking on links that require tv streaming programs.

world cup live

football live streamtorrent

The quality of the stream depends largely on its bitrate, the source and the connected users. A higher bitrate on the other hand requires a faster Internet connection. It is usually a good idea to switch tv stations if the image quality is bad or if it requires lots of buffering.

And that’s how you can watch the world cup online. Do you have additional tips, programs or websites that can be used to watch it online? Let us know in the comment section.

The only viable alternative if TV stations are not showing the Champions League at all or only one of the games is to watch it online. The website One Tip A Day have updated their Watch Champions League Free article in time for the quarter finales. The guide concentrates on the TV streaming software Sopcast which offers an English interface and is generally easy to use.

The article contains a few tips that aid new users plus information on how to obtain the channel names that stream the Champions League games. Additional information about Sopcast, the recently reviewed Sopcast Filter or PC TV are available here on Ghacks as well.

Only one question remains: Which team are you routing for?

Sopcast users can use the software to view the TV shows directly. The interface of the software has been translated to English and provides the means to browse and search the available channels. Some users probably prefer to use another video player to view Internet TV. Sopcast is offering an application called Sopcast Filter which enables Windows Media Player users to tune in into Sopcast streams and watch the shows in that video player instead.

The disadvantage of this method is however that the channel list is not available in Windows Media Player. Sopcast TV channels can be opened from the Open URL menu in Windows Media Player which means the user needs the url of the show before it can be watched. Those information can be found in the original Sopcast player or from websites that post those links regularly.

Not very comfortable but the history function of Windows Media Player makes it easier to access the same channels again at a later time. Users who are interested in watching TV on their PC can also take a look at our PC TV article detailing some of the options.

Best of all, you can watch the Champions League and UEFA Cup matches for free. All you need is to download a software that will be used as a client to receive the stream and display it on your computer. There are several possibilities to watch the Champions League match between AC Milan and Manchester United and I try to list them all in the next paragraph. I’m only listing the channels for the Sopcast application, this should be enough for everyone to enjoy the Champions League and UEFA matches.

• 2.5.2007 – 20:45 CET – Milan vs. Manchester: ESPN Asia, Sports Channel 3, Makaiko Sports and Gdtv-sports
• 3.5.2007 – 20:45 CET – Sevilla vs. Osasuna: Gdtv-sports, Shanghai GSports
• 3.5.2007 – 20:45 CET – Werder Bremen vs. Espanyol: Shanghai East TV

One Tip a Day posted a nice guide on how to watch Champions League, the UEFA cup, Premiere League and many other European soccer leagues using a free program called SopCast. The only drawback of such an application is of course that they rarely have the capacities to stream all games simultaneously. Fortunately for us SopCast streams different channels that show different games. Taking the Champions League games of yesterday as an example it was possible to watch three of the four games in SopCast.

Here is a quick rundown of the guide to watch Champions League at One Tip a Day.

• Download the free Sopcast (Broadband Connection required)
• Install Sopcast
• Configure it. Select login as anonymous and always login on this computer
• Finding the sports channels. The author suggests to use the website football 4 less which posts weekly schedules of all Champions League, UEFA Cup and national leagues on their website.
• That is it. Enjoy the games.

Sopcast is an alternative. You can download the freeware from the developers website or use one of the mirrors to do so. The download from the main website did not work for me, not a good sign, and I had to use one of the mirrors to get the program. Sopcast offers free tv streams over internet using P2P technique which means that the quality not only depends on the source who is streaming the tv signal but also on the peers that share their bandwidth as well.

A pleasant suprise was that the website was completely translated to English, which is not the case for most other Sopcast-like-tools out there. Once installed you can login anonymously and click on channels to see the big channel list.

Channels are sorted into categories like Sports and HiFi Music. As you can see on the picture to the left there are some characters that are not displayed correctly, most likely because of missing Chinese language support on my system.

Clicking on a channel opens a new window to the right of the program that is connected to it. You receive some basic information about buffering, speed and which program you are viewing.

It normally takes some time to load. Just remember that the quality of the output not only depends on your connection speed but also on the connection speed of your peers.

The tv stream playback began quickly but the buffering was not done yet. It is normal to get some small interruptions during the first minutes of playback. This should stop once you are connected to more peers.

Sopcast does not have that many US channels like TVU Player. It offers ESPN, HBO Movie and CNN. There are probably more at different times in the day and some minor ones that I missed but it’s rather mediocre.

All the football fans should also take note of CCTV 5 which is a Chinese Sports channel broadcasting lots of European football. (that is soccer in North America)

Conclusion: If you like sports you may want to try out Sopcast and won’t miss tvu player that much. If you like movies and tv shows sopcast is not really the right tv streaming application to use.