Watching soccer online in South Africa without DSTV is simple. You can stream the FIFA World Cup soccer for free on BBC iPlayer and ITV. These two channels will be sharing the broadcast rights for most of the games. You can also watch the FA Cup on ESPN+. These websites are all blocked if you’re in South Africa so you need to get around that by signing up for Smart DNS and setting it up on your device.
If you haven’t done that yet then sign up for your free trial here first.
Once you’d signed up for that you can follow our easy instructions to set up Smart DNS.
Once you’ve got that set up you can head over to BBC iPlayer and sign up for free. You just need your email address and it may ask for your postal code. Use any UK postal code like NW10 or WC2N or any other one.
Here’s the broadcast schedule for the World Cup games. The times are all UK time so bear that in mind.
Sunday November 20
Qatar vs Ecuador 4pm BBC
Monday November 21
England vs Iran 1pm BBC
Senegal vs Holland 4pm ITV
USA vs Wales 7pm ITV
Tuesday November 22
Argentina vs Saudi Arabia 10am ITV
Denmark vs Tunisia 1pm ITV
Mexico vs Poland 4pm BBC
France vs Australia 7pm BBC
Wednesday November 23
Morocco vs Croatia 10am ITV
Germany vs Japan 1pm ITV
Spain vs Costa Rica 4pm ITV
Belgium vs Canada 7pm BBC
Thursday November 24
Switzerland vs Cameroon 10am ITV
Uruguay vs South Korea 1pm BBC
Portugal vs Ghana 4pm ITV
Brazil vs Serbia 7pm BBC
Friday November 25
Wales vs Iran 10am BBC
Qatar vs Senegal 1pm BBC
Holland vs Ecuador 4pm ITV
England vs USA 7pm ITV
Saturday November 26
Tunisia vs Australia 10am BBC
Poland vs Saudi Arabia 1pm ITV
France vs Denmark 4pm ITV
Argentina vs Mexico 7pm ITV
Sunday November 27
Japan vs Costa Rica 10am ITV
Belgium vs Morocco 1pm BBC
Croatia vs Canada 4pm BBC
Spain vs Germany 7pm BBC
Monday November 28
Cameroon vs Serbia 10am ITV
South Korea vs Ghana 1pm BBC
Brazil vs Switzerland 4pm ITV
Portugal vs Uruguay 7pm ITV
Tuesday November 29
Ecuador vs Senegal 3pm ITV
Holland vs Qatar 3pm ITV
Iran vs United States 7pm BBC
Wales vs England 7pm BBC
Wednesday November 30
Tunisia vs France 3pm BBC
Australia vs Denmark 3pm BBC
Poland vs Argentina 7pm BBC
Saudi Arabia vs Mexico 7pm BBC
Thursday December 1
Canada vs Morocco 4pm BBC
Croatia vs Belgium 4pm BBC
Japan vs Spain 7pm ITV
Costa Rica vs Germany 7pm ITV
Friday December 2
Ghana vs Uruguay 4pm BBC
South Korea vs Portugal 4pm BBC
Serbia vs Switzerland 7pm ITV
Cameroon vs Brazil 7pm ITV
For other soccer leagues you can stream the action on Stan, ESPN+, Hotstar or a number of other sites we’ll list below. These websites are all blocked in South Africa so you will need to first set your Smart DNS proxy up to be able to access them.
Once you’ve completed the Smart DNS setup procedure you can watch soccer online at the following sites:
Hotstar and SonyLiv are Indian websites so you’ll need to make sure your Region settings on your Smart DNS Account are setup properly. Make sure Channel Group B and D are set to “India”. You can check out a detailed guide on signing up for Hotstar and SonyLiv paid accounts.
If you want to watch ESPN+ then you’ll need to leave Channel Group B set to “United States”. You can read more on our guide on how to sign up for ESPN+ outside the USA.
Each of these sports streaming websites focus on different football leagues and competitions. Here’s a rough guide on what soccer is streamed on each website.
Hotstar
Hotstar doesn’t stream a lot of soccer tournaments but English Premiership streaming makes it one of the more popular options. If you want to watch English Premiership football online in South Africa then Hotstar is your best bet if you don’t have DSTV.
If you want to watch German football then it’s a good option too as they stream a lot of the Bundesliga games as well as great highlights packages.
- English Premier League
- Bundesliga German Football
SonyLiv
SonyLiv is your best bet to stream UEFA Champions League games. They also stream a number of other European football tournaments.
- UEFA Champions League
- Serie A Italian Football
- UEFA Europa League
- European Qualifiers
ESPN+
ESPN+ streams a lot of European football as well as all the MLS American soccer games.
- English League Championship (EFL)
- English League 1
- Italian Serie A Football League
- Dutch Eredivisie
- Danish Superliga
- Major League Soccer (MLS)
- NCAA Men’s and Women’s Soccer
- WAFU Cup Of Nations
- Allsvenskan Swedish Soccer
- UEFA European Qualifiers
- A League Australian Football
English Premiership Soccer
The English Premiership is probably the most popular football league. Hotstar streams live Premiership games and they also have great preview, roundup and soccer highlights packages from all the English Premiership soccer games. Hotstar also shows some classic games if you enjoy a trip down memory lane. Besides the live streams they also allow you to watch all the replays of full Premiership matches.
English League Championship (EFL)
The English Football League Championship sees 24 of the top English League clubs compete to see who progresses to the English Premiership. All the English League Championship games are streamed live on ESPN+.
UEFA Championship League
The UEFA Champions League pits the top European football teams against each other. You can watch UEFA Champions League online on SonyLiv.
La Liga Spanish Football
The top Spanish teams compete to see who will be crowned Spanish football champions. Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are normally the teams battling it out for top spot with Atletico Madrid offering some solid resistance too. You can stream La Liga football on BeIn Sports. It costs around R200 a month but there’s plenty more football to watch besides the La Liga games. BeIn Sports also streams the Serie A, EFL games as well as some French Ligue 1 soccer. They also stream tennis like the WTA Beijing games.
Serie A Italian Football
All the Italian Serie A games are streamed on both ESPN+ and SonyLiv. SonyLiv is especially good because they also have great highlights shows and videos showing just the goals from each game. They also show the pre-match, half time break and post match interviews and discussions of each game. In addition to the highlights from each game they also have a video showing the football highlights from each match day.
Bundesliga
For all the best German football action stream Bundesliga soccer on Hotstar. Full games as well as special highlights videos are available on the site.
Dutch Eredivisie
The Eredivisie is the top Dutch football league. UEFA currently ranks it as the 11th best league in Europe. You can watch all the Dutch football games on ESPN+.
MLS Major League Soccer
If you want to watch all the American Major League Soccer games you can stream them on ESPN+.
UEFA U21 European Championships
If you want to watch the UEFA U21 soccer online you can stream it for free on Laola. It’s an Austrian site that streams some smaller events like the Under 21 Championships and even sports like table tennis and German and Korean basketball. It’s free to watch and there’s no registration required.
To watch soccer online in South Africa your best bet is to unblock these sites with Smart DNS Proxy and then sign up with the website that streams the soccer tournament you want to watch online.