Serving sports fans. Anytime. Anywhere. This is the tagline on top of ESPN’s website, but it might as well be a giant middle finger to anyone outside of the United States at this point. And while the message itself is painfully cheesy, nowadays it is simply an outright lie with access to ESPN+ unavailable to those overseas.
In late October, Awful Announcing picked up on a New York Post article that stated most written content was being moved to ESPN+ and its paywall. This decision may have annoyed some people who saw it as another cash grab by the Worldwide Leader in Sports. However, that’s not really the issue here.
The problem is that ESPN bundled the content with ESPN+ video content. Unfortunately, ESPN+ can’t be purchased if you’re overseas because the video rights are US only. The end result basically means that 80 percent of ESPN.com articles can’t be read by anyone outside of America.
Zach Lowe articles are inaccessible. So too is the ability to read Matthew Barry stroke himself to 10,000+ words on an unrelated topic before his Love/Hate column. Thankfully Marty McGee’s Bottom 10 hasn’t been put behind the paywall, but that’s probably in the pipeline.
Let’s go back to that tagline. Serving sports fans. Anytime. Anywhere. Clearly ESPN has to know that ESPN+ can’t be purchased by anyone overseas which is counterintuitive to how the company gets down. If the past two decades have taught us anything it’s that ESPN only cares about making money and attracting people who aren’t watching it.
That’s perfectly acceptable. No one would begrudge them for that. It’s ESPN’s seemingly never-ending quest to stick it to the core fanbase in pursuit of these goals. Whether intentional or not, ESPN happily gives real sports fans a proverbial prostate exam in pursuit of more dollars and eyeballs.
The end result are stupid decisions such as the move to paywall written content to ESPN+ without having a plan in place for anyone outside of America. Serving sports fans anywhere is in the company’s freaking mission statement and ESPN fell at the first hurdle. At least give us the chance to pay for the content.
Can you subscribe to ESPN+ overseas?
You can subscribe to ESPN+ overseas, but it ain’t easy. For starters, you ignore all those VPN sites promising access to things like ESPN+ and Hulu. They claim the process is as easy as signing up, paying for a three-year contract and logging in, but this is nonsense. You need a lot more than that.
What you need to access ESPN+ overseas:
- An android device or Google Chrome
- A VPN subscription
- A geolocation spoofer app or browser extension
- A US address
- Some luck
If you try to use number two or three on the list alone, you may run into some difficulties. However, if you have both a VPN and a geolocation spoofer turned on, getting through the signup process is possible. That being said, you’ll still need a US home address when you sign up. A US-based credit card is not required at the moment and I was able to sign up with my Thailand card using my home address in the states.
This isn’t a foolproof process by any means as number five on the list highlights. It took me a like a day of trial and error to get this completed. I actually managed to sign up and watch YouTube TV faster than ESPN+ mostly due to the latter’s awful website.
Before accessing ESPN+ overseas as a subscriber, you need to make sure the VPN and geolocation spoofer are turned on. I actually have an Android tablet where these are always turned on which is a possible solution for you.
But let’s be real for a second. The fact anyone outside of America needs to go through all these hoops to read articles from Jeff Passan or watch Sun Belt men’s basketball games is dumb. Almost as dumb as ESPN calling itself the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
