Watching the NFL and College Football from outside the US

[mrsimperless]

I know we have quite a few foreign football fans on here and I was wondering what you do to stay in touch and enjoy both the college and pro football seasons. I've been living in Bangkok for about 8 months now and this will be my first football season away from home in quite a while. It's going to be a struggle.

I'm sure there are some great places on the internet to frequent, (I read profootballtalk.com on a daily basis) but I'd love to be able to download games, highlights etc.

I think its time to move back home!

[AlexB]

I know we have quite a few foreign football fans on here and I was wondering what you do to stay in touch and enjoy both the college and pro football seasons. I've been living in Bangkok for about 8 months now and this will be my first football season away from home in quite a while. It's going to be a struggle.

I'm sure there are some great places on the internet to frequent, (I read profootballtalk.com on a daily basis) but I'd love to be able to download games, highlights etc.

I think its time to move back home!

This isn't going to be much of a help, but I pretty much lost the 2004 season of the NFL when I went through SE Asia & Australia for 18 months. I saw about a quarter of the Buccs v. Eagles in a Perth casino (although I was so drunk I saw about four screens, so in effect I saw the full 60 minutes :D ) but that was it, and even now had to think who was in the SB (it was the NE v. CAR game right?)

Having said that from September through November I was in the Nothern Terrotiry and Western Australia, and then for two months I worked in a place called Caiguna, population 11 (including me) and was 70km from the nearest bar or internet connection, so I didn't really help myself with my locations!

Hope you have better luck.

Edit: Maybe Neon Chaos would be worth a PM, as he is in the Phillipines?

[SirFozzie]

Take a look at this:

http://www.nasn.com/

[Yossarian]

In the UK you can watch the NLF on Sky Sports - between two and four games a week usually.

NASN to the best of my knowledge shows just about everything EXCEPT the games.

If you know the usual torrent sites, you may be able to get games from there. Also NFL has a 'field pass' which gives you online radio access to games.

I used to also listen to espn / sporting news radio over the internet.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I struggled through 3 years of this.

North American Sports Network is a good option if it is available on any satellite service you can get. The American Armed Services Network also carries a lot of games, but I think it's harder to get (outside of the military) than NASN.

I think ESPN offers college games via the internet. I have never tried it, but I think their "Gameplan" subscription allows you to do this. Ah, yes. Here it is:

http://proxy.espn.go.com/ncf/gameplan/index?null

For the NFL, it's a bit trickier. You either have the satellite channels mentioned above, a U.S. sports bar, or listening to the games on the radio. All NFL games are now webcast on the radio. You have to pay for the service, but it's pretty reasonable.

There is a service out there, that I used for one season, that will mail you DVD copies of college/pro football games. It's a bit pricey and you don't get the DVD for about a week or so after the game, but it's always an option.

[AlexB]

Geography update - Bangkok is not in Europe ;)

UK's fantastic for NFL coverage, but Bangkok's tougher with the time difference. None of the three visits (on the same trip) were in the NFL season, but from memory there is Fox Sports (Australian channel) and Star Sports there - not sure if either of these will carry the NFL.

Edit: for some reason I didn't see HB's post, which is actually helpful for the guy, as is Dutch's below

[Dutch]

I'll be spending the next three NFL seasons overseas.

AFN (Armed Forces Network) provide roughly 4-8 games a week including all special events (Monday Night/Thursday Night/Saturday/Playoff Games.

Of course they start a bit later than they do Stateside. Germany is +6 Hours.

However, as a fan of the Bucs, I will subscribe to the NFL Internet Radio service and listen when they aren't on TV.

I am hoping the NFL offers an Internet viewing subscription. I'd gladly pay Direct TV Sunday Ticket Prices just for internet games...but the demand might not make it a worthwhile venture for them.

[Kokoshin]

NFL Update from Spain:

Digital+ (SAT) is showing 4 games a week, 2 of them on Sundays (both of them live), Monday Night Football (live as well, at 3 am) and another one in midweek.

Playoff coverage is excellent. All games are shown, if possible, live.

And of course, torrent sites do the trick, which is specially helpful here for College games, since they are not carried in Spain.

[mrsimperless]

The other bad thing about Bangkok is that they're at least 5 years or so behind us as far as internet connection speeds go. We have "ISDN" lines, but they're about the equivalant of 56k dialup from my experience, on a good day. I've gone to Starbucks and paid 10 bucks for 3 hours of internet service at 5K a second before. The place I stay at just upgraded to wireless access and in the process apparently upgraded their ISP, but it is still extremely slow. No real-time video, or even probably audio for me. Not to mention that 4:00 PM games in the states will be coming on at 3 in the morning. I can probably find my Colts games to download off of newsgroups, but it'll likely take me a couple of days to download a game and I'll have to stay away from all sources of sports news during the lag time.