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UK viewers - VPN now cheapest option for Gold meetings + Watching the French meetings
Get a VPN to watch the Indoor Tour Gold & Continental Tour Gold meetings?
As mentioned previously on this forum, for the next 5 or 6 years at least, a new subscription streaming service has the exclusive rights in the UK to broadcast 6 of the 7 Indoor Tour Gold meetings (except Birmingham) and all 14 of the Continental Tour Gold meetings. That's 20 of the top one-day meetings now behind a paywall !! There is a cheap solution though ...
In order to watch these meetings, you'll need to either
a) Sign up to that streaming service for a hefty £14.99 per month which gives you access to all their sports, Nordic drama, documentaries & films
OR
b) Get a VPN (quite cheaply - see below) and use it to watch these Gold meetings on the World Athletics YouTube channel, as well as giving you access to all the other geo-blocked athletics TV broadcasts throughout the year (some detailed further below).
My unreserved recommendation for a VPN is NordVPN. I can truly say it's excellent, very easy to use and very reasonably priced if you go for the best value option - £71.76 for a 2-year Standard plan (you pay up front) - and it works out even cheaper than that for the first 2 years if you follow my advice below (see about cashback below).
To use NordVPN after installing the program, you just open the desktop app and click the country you want to connect to from the list on the left left-hand-side. It connects in a few seconds and the speed it offers isn't discernably different than my usual internet connection. It's very easy to use and, furthermore, I've never had any issues with it. There's also an app for smartphones which works very smoothly too.
Here's the thing ... You can currently get 34% cashback by purchasing NordVPN via TopCashback - https://www.topcashback.co.uk/nordvpn/ - That would be £24.40 cashback bringing the cost of 2 years' VPN service down to just £47.36.
You need to be a member of TopCashback to get that cashback (it's free to join and use) and there's no catch to the offer. TopCashback is totally legit, with loads of other ways of saving you a lot of money on regular spending. Over the years I've received over £1,400 cashback! If you do join TopCashback, please do so using my link - https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/gavin01 That way, I get a bit of commission and you also get a £10 sign-up bonus, cashable when you withdraw your cashback from a transaction/s (this doesn't affect how much cashback you get.)
The cashback from NordVPN will be "pending" for about 8 weeks before it's confirmed and you can then withdraw the cash - that's to guard against people cancelling the transaction.
Just so you're aware, to get the heavily discounted 2-year plan again after your first 2 years you'd need to cancel your subscription shortly before it expires, otherwise it will automatically renew at £84 per year. Then, to qualify again for the discounted plan and the cashback from TopCashback, I think you'd need to set up a new NordVPN account (with a different email address). I'm testing that out soon when my subscription expires in March.
As well as the Indoor & Continental Tour Gold meetings you could also use a VPN to watch the following geo-blocked TV broadcasts (a non-exhaustive list) ...
If you have any questions or concerns about NordVPN or TopCashback, please ask away.
The post below is regarding watching the French meetings on the World Indoor Tour ...
As mentioned previously on this forum, for the next 5 or 6 years at least, a new subscription streaming service has the exclusive rights in the UK to broadcast 6 of the 7 Indoor Tour Gold meetings (except Birmingham) and all 14 of the Continental Tour Gold meetings. That's 20 of the top one-day meetings now behind a paywall !! There is a cheap solution though ...
In order to watch these meetings, you'll need to either
a) Sign up to that streaming service for a hefty £14.99 per month which gives you access to all their sports, Nordic drama, documentaries & films
OR
b) Get a VPN (quite cheaply - see below) and use it to watch these Gold meetings on the World Athletics YouTube channel, as well as giving you access to all the other geo-blocked athletics TV broadcasts throughout the year (some detailed further below).
My unreserved recommendation for a VPN is NordVPN. I can truly say it's excellent, very easy to use and very reasonably priced if you go for the best value option - £71.76 for a 2-year Standard plan (you pay up front) - and it works out even cheaper than that for the first 2 years if you follow my advice below (see about cashback below).
To use NordVPN after installing the program, you just open the desktop app and click the country you want to connect to from the list on the left left-hand-side. It connects in a few seconds and the speed it offers isn't discernably different than my usual internet connection. It's very easy to use and, furthermore, I've never had any issues with it. There's also an app for smartphones which works very smoothly too.
Here's the thing ... You can currently get 34% cashback by purchasing NordVPN via TopCashback - https://www.topcashback.co.uk/nordvpn/ - That would be £24.40 cashback bringing the cost of 2 years' VPN service down to just £47.36.
You need to be a member of TopCashback to get that cashback (it's free to join and use) and there's no catch to the offer. TopCashback is totally legit, with loads of other ways of saving you a lot of money on regular spending. Over the years I've received over £1,400 cashback! If you do join TopCashback, please do so using my link - https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/gavin01 That way, I get a bit of commission and you also get a £10 sign-up bonus, cashable when you withdraw your cashback from a transaction/s (this doesn't affect how much cashback you get.)
The cashback from NordVPN will be "pending" for about 8 weeks before it's confirmed and you can then withdraw the cash - that's to guard against people cancelling the transaction.
Just so you're aware, to get the heavily discounted 2-year plan again after your first 2 years you'd need to cancel your subscription shortly before it expires, otherwise it will automatically renew at £84 per year. Then, to qualify again for the discounted plan and the cashback from TopCashback, I think you'd need to set up a new NordVPN account (with a different email address). I'm testing that out soon when my subscription expires in March.
As well as the Indoor & Continental Tour Gold meetings you could also use a VPN to watch the following geo-blocked TV broadcasts (a non-exhaustive list) ...
- If you get fed up of the BBC's coverage you could instead watch the world feeds for the World Championships, European Championships, Commonwealth Games, European Indoors & World Indoors (I link to all of these feeds in the Live Streaming Links thread)
- The Finnish GP meetings (5 or 6 per summer, all Conti Tour meetings)
- The Swedish GP meetings (3 per summer, all Conti Tour) & 2 or 3 Swedish indoor meetings on the Indoor Tour
- The ISTAF Berlin meetings (outdoors & indoors) and a couple of other German Conti Tour meetings
- National championships in countries where they're broadcast on TV, e.g., Germany, Spain, Italy ...
- Italian road race and cross country TV broadcasts
- The official live streams of Japanese TV broadcasts (rather than relying on the occasionally spotty unofficial streams)
If you have any questions or concerns about NordVPN or TopCashback, please ask away.
The post below is regarding watching the French meetings on the World Indoor Tour ...
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