This year, the legendary Mamelodi Sundowns are at it again. Having won the South African Premier Division title a record seven times, they’re not done yet. The Brazilians are back at the top of the last season’s charts, so tension is at an all-time high in the ABSA Premiership, especially for the fans of Orlando Pirates and Free State Stars. Which club makes it to the 2019 CAF Champions League then?

SuperSport made a $227 million deal with South Africa’s PSL and secured its rights to broadcast all matches of the South African Premier Division during the next five years. The media conglomerate broadcasts circa seven live matches a week, sub-licensing some games to SABC, the state network. But if you want to live stream ABSA Premiership online, you need the DSTV subscription with SuperSport included.

The subscription is well worth the money. A part of the large DSTV network, SuperSport is the biggest online sports channel in Africa. Its live online streaming service covers an impressive wealth of sports events from all over the world, including international and domestic soccer, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, boxing, wrestling, and whatnot. And it’s your ultimate destination for streaming the South African Premier Division.

Unfortunately, if you are a South African expat living in the US, UK, Australia, or anywhere else beyond South Africa, SuperSport live streaming is beyond your reach. The same is true if you go abroad on a vacation or a business trip. It’s geo-blocked abroad and the reason is quite pedestrian – licensing.

Each broadcasting company needs to purchase a separate license to stream each sports event for each specific country. As you would imagine, SuperSport has the right to broadcast ABSA Premiership in South Africa.

If you bought a SuperSport subscription back at home in South Africa and were planning on live streaming your favorite league while traveling the world, you’re out of luck – it’s still locked for everyone abroad.

The problem is SuperSport identifies your location based on your Internet Protocol address (IP), and not based on your subscription. So when it sees your foreign IP address, it filters its content, leaving you with bare-bones tables and scores.

There is only one way to bypass that block – with a VPN.

A Virtual Private Network is an online service that routes your Internet traffic through its servers. A VPN provider with servers in South Africa should have no problem assigning you a South African IP address that will open up all of your SuperSport repositories.

On top of that, a VPN encrypts your traffic, which provides additional benefits:

  • Privacy – your snooping Internet Service Provider, Google, data brokers, and spy agencies want to monitor your traffic 24/7. With VPN encryption, none of the surveillance entities are able to track your online activities.
  • Security – without encryption, your traffic is vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle attacks (MITM), as well as identity and credit card theft. With a VPN, your data is secured irrespective of how you connect to the Internet, be it from your home network or a public Wi-Fi hotspot.
  • Freedom – with a VPN, you can spoof into almost any country, and bypass most firewalls and censorship blocks. Think of unfiltered repositories of YouTube, Steam, iTunes, Netflix, and other services as well as social media platforms blocked in some countries.
  1. Buy a subscription with a VPN provider (to help you choose, see the list of suggested companies below).
  2. Install its VPN software on your device. Luckily, most VPNs are now cross-platform, so you can use them on your Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, or Ubuntu devices.
  3. Log into your VPN using the credentials provided by your VPN company.
  4. Choose a server in South Africa and hit “Connect.”
  5. Open a clean window in your browser (clean means with DNS and cache deleted).
  6. Launch your SuperSport player. You should be able to live stream South African Premier Division now.

Think twice before using a free VPN, however. Many “free” VPNs come loaded with malware and spyware, and sell your information to data brokers.

When choosing a VPN, make sure you test the service before committing to a long-term subscription, which tends to be more wallet-friendly than monthly plans. The best way to ensure you get the quality up for the price is to test the connection speed of South African servers and the VPN’s ability to bypass geo-blocks without leaking your real location and personal details. Fortunately, reputable providers offer free or paid trials or a generous money-back guarantee, so you can test your VPN risk-free.

PureVPN

  • Excellent client with pre-configured modes for streaming, P2P, privacy
  • Kill switch
  • Support for wide range of protocols, including OpenVPN

VPNArea

  • The cell phone app worked seamlessly
  • Customer service seemed genuinely interested in helping
  • 24/7 Live Chat

CyberGhost

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

NordVPN

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

Unlocator VPN

  • Good server coverage
  • Cross-platform
  • Unblocks a wide range of streaming services