We finally did it. After 22 years of “this is the year,” near-misses, and three straight second-place finishes that genuinely hurt, the Gunners are champions of England again. Arteta lifted the trophy, Odegaard hoisted it at Selhurst Park, and a generation of fans who barely remember the Invincibles got to watch their team actually win the league.
Which makes it especially galling when you book a holiday or get sent abroad for work and suddenly cannot watch the team you have followed for the last decade. The matchday routine you have built up — your spot on the sofa, the pre-match nerves, the group chat going off — all of it falls apart the second you cross a border. This guide is for every Gooner who has ever opened Sky Go in a hotel in Spain and seen that depressing “content not available in your region” screen, or fired up Peacock from a holiday rental in Greece and got nothing but a black box where the game should be.
Here is how it actually works, why it goes wrong, and what to do about it.
The Broadcaster Mess, Explained
The reason watching Arsenal abroad is harder than it should be comes down to one thing: the Premier League sells its rights country by country. There is no single global subscription. There is no Arsenal+ that lets you watch every game from anywhere. The league carved the world up into territories and sold each one to whoever paid the most, and where you happen to be standing decides what you can stream.
UK: Sky Sports and TNT
At home, Sky Sports has the lion’s share — 215 live games this season — with TNT Sports picking up another 52. Between them they cover most of what is on. The catch every Gooner already knows is the Saturday 3pm blackout: nothing kicking off in that window can be shown live on UK telly, full stop, by law. That is why you sometimes end up scrolling Twitter for minute-by-minute updates while your nan watches Pointless in the next room.
NOW (Sky’s streaming arm) sells day passes if you do not want a full contract, and TNT now lives inside HBO Max in the UK. For most fans based here, between those two and the BBC’s Match of the Day highlights, you are covered.
US: NBC, USA Network, Peacock
NBC has the American rights and splits coverage across NBC, USA Network, and Peacock. Peacock is where most of the games people actually want to see end up, and the early kick-offs from London are perfect breakfast viewing on the East Coast. If you are a Gooner who relocated to New York or Chicago, this is genuinely a decent deal — far better than what UK fans get for the price.
Everywhere else
Canada gets Fubo, Australia switched to Stan Sport, Ireland has Sky and TNT plus Premier Sports, most of Europe has Sky Deutschland, CANAL+, Viaplay, or DAZN depending on the country. Asia, South America, Africa — every region has its own broadcaster, its own paywall, its own app you have to download. The Premier League website lists every partner if you ever need to look up where a specific match will be shown in a specific country.
All of which is fine until you actually move between any two of those places. The subscriptions you pay for at home stop working the moment your IP address says you are somewhere else.
Why Your Sky Go Stops Working at the Airport
You pay for Sky Sports every month. You have the app on your phone. You land in Lisbon for a long weekend, open it up at the hotel to catch the lunchtime kick-off, and the app politely tells you to go away. Why?
Geoblocking. Streaming services check your IP address against the region your account is registered to. Sky Go in particular is licensed for UK use only — the second you connect from a Portuguese hotel Wi-Fi, you are outside the licence, and the app refuses to play. Peacock works the same way. So does TNT. So does basically every Premier League broadcaster on the planet.
There are usually a few “grace” days where some apps let you keep watching while travelling, but it is inconsistent and there is no rule about which platforms do it or for how long. Plan around it and you will get burned eventually, usually during a North London Derby.
The Standard Fix: a VPN
The usual workaround is a VPN. You install an app, pick a server in the UK, and to Sky Go it now looks like you are sitting in Croydon instead of Crete. Plug in your normal login and the game plays. For about 90% of away-day situations this is all you need, and any of the big-name VPNs will do the job — Surfshark, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, the usual suspects.
A few things worth knowing if this is your first time:
A VPN does not get you Sky Sports for free. You still need a paying account or someone else’s login (do not look at me). What it does is let your existing subscription work when you are abroad.
Pick a UK server in a major city — London or Manchester — not whatever the app picks for “fastest.” Specific city servers tend to be more stable for streaming because they are tuned for it.
Run a speed test before kick-off. Premier League streams in 1080p eat through bandwidth and a slow VPN turns a tight game into a slideshow. If you are on hotel Wi-Fi already on the edge, the VPN overhead can push you over.
When the VPN Doesn’t Work (And It Sometimes Doesn’t)
Here is where things get annoying. Broadcasters have spent serious money over the last few years building detection systems specifically to catch VPN traffic. The big streaming platforms now maintain blocklists of known VPN server IP addresses. You connect, the platform sees an IP it recognises as belonging to NordVPN’s datacentre, and shuts you out with a vague “we have detected unusual activity on your account” message.
This happens more on the bigger sports services than on smaller broadcasters because they have the resources to bother. Peacock is notorious for it. Sky has been steadily tightening up too. You can usually get around it by hopping to a different server, or switching VPN providers entirely, but it is genuinely a cat-and-mouse situation that gets worse during high-profile matches when more people are trying to dodge regional restrictions at once.
The other thing that happens — less talked about, more annoying — is that even when the VPN connects fine, the streaming service flags your account for “unusual login location” and demands extra verification. You spend the first ten minutes of the match clicking emails and entering codes while Saka is already taking a corner.
The mobile-network workaround
When a regular VPN keeps getting blocked, the alternative is to route your connection through a real mobile carrier instead of a datacentre. Mobile proxies do exactly that — your traffic goes out through a 4G or 5G cellular IP belonging to an actual carrier, which is the same kind of connection your phone uses to load Instagram. Streaming services treat that traffic the same way they treat any phone on a normal mobile network, because functionally that is what it is. Services like 4G mobile proxies sell daily and weekly access without locking you into a long subscription, which is more sensible than an annual contract if you only need it for the odd holiday or a tournament weekend. You set it up in your browser or device settings the same way you would a VPN, point it at a UK carrier IP, and the broadcaster sees a normal-looking mobile connection from home.
Worth being honest about it: this is more of a faff than installing a VPN app, and most fans will not need to bother. But if you are somewhere strict (the Middle East and parts of Asia are particularly aggressive on this), or you keep getting kicked out of Peacock mid-match, it solves a problem that nothing else really does.
Watching on a Telly vs. a Laptop
Streaming through a laptop browser is the easiest setup. Install the VPN, open Sky Go or Peacock in the browser, done. Phones and tablets are nearly as straightforward — VPN app, then the streaming app, no extra steps.
Where it gets fiddly is smart TVs and streaming sticks. Most VPN apps do not run on a hotel TV, and you cannot exactly install one on the Fire Stick sitting in your apartment in Berlin. Two practical workarounds:
Run the VPN at the router level. If you control the Wi-Fi (your own place abroad, not a hotel) you can install a VPN on the router itself, and every device on the network — TV, phone, console — gets routed through it automatically. More setup up front, much less hassle later.
Cast from your laptop. Connect the laptop to the VPN, stream Sky Go in the browser, then cast the browser tab to a Chromecast or screen-mirror to the TV. Quality takes a small hit but it works in any rental.
Is Any of This Even Legal?
Quick honest note. Using a VPN is legal in most countries (some exceptions: the UAE, China, and a few others have restrictions). Whether using one to access a streaming service from outside its licensed region breaks the service’s terms of use is a different question — it usually does. In practice the worst that happens is your stream gets cut off or, in rare cases, the account gets suspended.
Using someone else’s Sky login that they’ve “kindly shared” is a different conversation again, and not one we are getting into.
The Short Version
You are in the UK: Sky Sports plus either TNT or HBO Max covers almost everything. BBC for highlights. Done.
You are abroad temporarily and want to keep using your home subscriptions: get a decent VPN, pick a UK server in London, run a speed test, log in to whatever you normally use.
Your VPN keeps getting blocked or you are somewhere with aggressive geo-restrictions: mobile proxies through a real carrier are a more reliable fallback, especially for Peacock and the bigger US-based platforms.
You have relocated permanently: subscribe to your local broadcaster: NBC/Peacock in the US, Stan in Australia, Fubo in Canada. Cheaper and easier than fighting the regional lottery every week.