• In the UK, the Open Championship will be aired domestically by Sky Sports. You can also find it among your Now TV channels if you are a subscriber.
  • In the United States, NBC Sports holds exclusive broadcasting rights. Since it’s Golf Channel’s parent network, you will also be able to catch some live action on Golf Channels’ streaming portal. Also, Fubo TV is a live streaming service that bundles NBC Sports in one of its packages, available with a 7-day free trial.
  • In Australia, Fox Sports is your ultimate destination for The British Open coverage this season.

Quite unfortunately for The Open fans living or traveling abroad in mid-July this year, all of the channels and streaming providers broadcasting the tournament are geo-restricted.

The reason for the geo-block is quite pedestrian – broadcasting license. It requires each company to air the event domestically.

If you have your Sky Sports or NBC subscription and are in the UK or US, respectively, you’re all set to stream The Open when it kicks off.

But what if you are abroad, vacationing, working, or living a nomadic lifestyle? You might have to consider using a VPN to bypass your streamer’s geo-block. A Virtual Private Network allows you to unlock the majority of sports streaming services – from anywhere in the world.

A VPN is, in layman’s terms, a network of servers across the globe operated by a VPN provider. When you connect to a VPN server, it does three things –

  1. It encrypts your traffic.
  2. It assigns you a new IP address in the country of your choice.
  3. It routes your traffic through its tunnel, so your ISP is unable to see what you’re doing online.

Connect to a UK VPN server when you need to bypass the geo-block imposed by Sky Sports. With a UK IP address, you appear as a regular English Internet user. And with a valid subscription, you can live stream The British Open without issues. In the same vein, connect to a US VPN server to unlock NBC or pick an Australian server to unlock Fox Sports.

The flexibility provided by a VPN has made it one of the most popular security tools these days. Used by ex-pats, tourists, digital nomads, investigative journalists, students, office workers, and many other user groups, a VPN boasts many no-nonsense selling points:

  • Unblocks streaming sites – sports streaming providers, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, ITV, SlingTV, FuboTV, to name a few. Also, the US repositories of Steam, iTunes, and Google Play so that you can get your hands on the latest games and apps restricted to select regions.
  • Bypasses regional blackouts – you must be familiar with situations when you can’t stream some local sports games (i.e., NHL) because you are in a blacked-out region. Spoof into your neighbor state with a VPN and stream to your heart’s content.
  • Bypasses ISP throttling – ever noticed how your connection speed is fine while you browse and read, and then it slows down to a crawl when you stream sports, torrent, or play online games? That’s your Internet Service Provider throttling your bandwidth. A VPN allows you to bypass that nuisance.
  • Gets you past firewalls – your school, college campus, or office might block your access to some areas of the Internet. In most cases, the blacklisted sites are social networks, YouTube, gaming servers, and sports streaming sites. Of course, your employer wants you to focus on work, but that means you can’t spend your coffee break streaming The Open. A VPN allows you to bypass all sorts of firewalls, including state-imposed like the one in China.
  • Improves your privacy and security – because a VPN encrypts your traffic, it conceals – or obfuscates – your data from your snooping ISP and hackers alike.
  1. Subscribe to a reputable VPN service – check my suggestions below.
  2. Download and install your VPN client on your device. Log in.
  3. Pick a UK server to unlock Sky Sports or a US server to unlock NBC. Hit “Connect.” (See if your VPN lists streaming-optimized servers separately – these provide better speeds).
  4. Clear your browser’s cache and re-launch it.
  5. Go to your Sky Sports or NBC Sports/Golf Channel web page and log in.
  6. You should be able to stream The British Open live now.

These VPNs meet a variety of requirements for streaming The British Open this year – servers in the UK, USA, and Australia, excellent speeds for HD streaming without the annoying buffering, and robust security specs.

ExpressVPN

Our top pick!
  • Always evades internet control in the PRC
  • Keeps ahead of the Netflix VPN detection algorithm
  • Benchmark tests show excellent speed

Torguard

  • User-friendly TorGuard app
  • Plans that include a dedicated IP
  • Gift card payment options

IPVanish

  • No limit on the number of devices you can connect at the same time
  • SOCKS5 proxy, which its main rivals don’t have
  • More VPN servers in more US cities to dodge blackouts