For better or worse, there are only two official broadcasters of NB I in and outside of Hungary.

Magyar Televízió, or MTV, is the Hungarian public broadcaster airing and streaming NB I games for free – on TV and online via its streaming portal. You can find the NB I League coverage on their M4 channel as well as on MinDig TV, Digi, UPC Direct, Telekom, Fibernet, and Vidanet

MTV is available domestically and internationally, but its downside is it doesn’t stream the entirety of the First League. You are going to have to tune in to a subscription-based streamer to catch up with the rest of the games.

Sport TV, or Sport1, is an AMC-owned subscription-based European sports channel available in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic. It is licensed to broadcast NB games as well as a wealth of other football national championships (Scotland, the Netherlands, France) and some NFL games in these countries.

Sport TV is also available in the premium packages of Digi TV and UPC Direct.

Although M4 offers live streams of the OTP Bank Liga online for free without geographical restrictions, you don’t get the full season coverage. The top-of-the-crop matches are available via subscription-based services.

Provided you have your subscription and are in Hungary or one of its neighboring countries covered by licensed streamers (Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic), you should have no problem streaming the NB1 matches.

However, in several scenarios, NB1 can be unavailable in your location. All broadcasters have a limited license to stream in select regions only, except for M4 that’s licensed to stream NB1 internationally. Even M4 can be restricted in your region due to local censorship considerations.

As a result, you get locked out of your premium content when you travel abroad. And “abroad” means a whole lot of countries – the UK, the US, LatAm, Australia, the Middle East, you get the point. So all of you Hungarian expats, business tourists, and vacationers, as well as digital nomads are at the mercy of M4’s international coverage. It might be low-res, offer limited coverage, and have no replays, but it’s still better than nothing.

But you don’t have to be abroad to get blocked from the NB1 streams. Many schools and offices in Hungary now deploy stringent firewalls blocking your access to sports streaming sites, social networks, YouTube, and gaming servers. Long story short, they’re banning all the fun things because they want you to focus on work. It means you can’t stream NB1 during your coffee break. So much for online freedom.

Consider using a VPN. A Virtual Private Network is a service that runs VPN servers in various countries across the globe. When you connect to a server in the country of your choice, it assigns you an Internet Protocol (IP) address of that country. With a Hungarian IP address, you can easily access your Sport1 live streams from anywhere in the world because your provider will identify you as a regular user connecting from the national territory.

In the same vein, a VPN obfuscates your traffic from your school or office firewall. In layman’s terms, your office firewall is unable to see which sites you visit when you browse through a VPN. So it can’t block you from accessing NB1 live streams.

Besides allowing you to swap your IP, VPNs have some no-nonsense security benefits due to the data encryption they deploy:

  • Your Internet Service Provider can’t monitor your online activities
  • Hackers can’t steal your sensitive information because it is encrypted
  • You can easily bypass your ISP throttling when gaming and streaming
  • You can navigate below the radar of state surveillance agencies
  • You can circumvent local censorship bans
  • You can unlock a gold mine of streaming and gaming services – Steam, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc.
  1. Pick a VPN that meets your requirements and subscribe.
  2. Download and install your VPN client. Launch it and log in.
  3. Connect to a VPN server in Hungary.
  4. Clear your browser’s cache to be on the safe side (otherwise, it might leak your real location).
  5. Open your browser, go to your streaming provider’s site and log in.
  6. You are all set to stream NB1 online – no matter where you are.

Tip: steer clear of free VPNs like Hola that leak your location, and sensitive data, log your online activities and share them with third parties.

NordVPN

  • More US city locations than its rivals
  • Includes malware protection
  • No-logs policy

CyberGhost VPN

  • Precise locations
  • Very large VPN server network
  • Offers a 45-day money-back guarantee