Football fan or occasional amateur? Whether on television, computer, tablet or telephone, there are now many solutions for watching football matches live or in replay, even for free, including during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Football is undoubtedly the sport that attracts the most viewers in Europe in general, and in France in particular. It is not by chance that it is the subject of a fierce fight with great blows of millions of euros between the channels to acquire the rights to broadcast the matches. Nor if certain broadcasters have made it their specialty, by concocting specific subscriptions – obviously paying. But times are changing and the days when you had to subscribe to Canal+ or a satellite package to watch a match live or follow the entire competition on TV via a decoder are now over. And today, even if we can make do with DTT to see some key matches, everything goes through the Internet, and more specifically, through streaming.
Main advantage: it is no longer necessary to stand in front of a television to enjoy the show, any digital device with a screen and an Internet connection can do the trick, from the computer to the tablet via the telephone of course. Suddenly, it becomes possible to watch a match anywhere, indoors or outdoors, in the office, in bed, in a garden and even in transport, via the mobile network. Secondary advantage, but not negligible: you can benefit from excellent display quality, with a 4K image on compatible devices, while “classic” television is still limited to Full HD with DTT. Convenient for those who have a suitable screen – latest generation TV – with a very high-speed fibre, 4G or 5G Internet connection. The major international competitions such as the World Cup or the Euro are also great sales accelerators in the television department…
However, if the receivers and the pipes are there, there remains a question of size: which source to choose? Because it is not enough to have a compatible device to watch matches: it is still necessary to know who broadcasts them, and under what conditions. And, on this point, it’s a bit of a jungle – or an obstacle course – because apart from the big matches which are broadcast free of charge on traditional channels, you have to do research and make choices to know who is broadcasting what. and take the corresponding paid subscription…
As we have said, the sources that officially broadcast football matches are as numerous as they are varied. Some are free – and therefore freely accessible on free-to-air channels or websites –, others only accessible via a paid subscription to a specialized broadcaster. Competition is fierce between the actors, and it is advisable to be initiated to follow the market of the rights (see the site Mediasportif for more information on the subject). Thus, after much negotiation, it was Amazon who won the broadcasting rights for Ligue 1 Uber Eats, to the detriment of traditional players, which requires fans to subscribe to the Prime Video service.
In France, depending on the competition, you can watch matches in the clear for free on channels such as TF1, M6 or France TV, which offer streaming on their sites or applications. Note that it is sometimes necessary to register by creating an account, such as on the 6Play service of the M6 group. For paid platforms, which cover more dating, look into the offers of Canal+, RMC Sports, bein Sports Where Eurosport, Mediapro having ceased after a few months of activity. Again, access can be done on the Web with a browser, or with a dedicated application (and the associated codes!). Note that Internet service providers (ISPs) also offer paid packages including matches and sports channels. Pay attention to the prices: it generally takes about twenty euros per month to access the services of a single platform. And so much more when you multiply the subscriptions.
For the 2022 World Cup taking place in Qatar, the legal offer is quite simple: the competition is indeed broadcast in full on the channels of the beIN Sports group (beIN Sports 1 / beIN Sports 2), which require a paid subscription. . However, it is possible to follow some matches for free on TF1 and myTF1, the audiovisual group broadcasting 16 group matches, 5 round of 16, 3 quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the “little final” and the final.
On TV as well as on computer or mobile, there are many ways to watch matches live or delayed, whether via DTT channels, IP TV from ISPs – television from Internet boxes –, applications specialized like Molotov.tv or Captvty, the sites or apps of broadcasters. According to your desires, we invite you to consult the following practical sheets devoted to these subjects which will indicate the procedure to follow with all the details.
Watch free TV on computer
Watch free TV on mobile
Watch replay TV for free
For direct access to the sites and streaming services of the main broadcasters, follow the following links.
Many websites allow you to watch football matches in streaming for free, through a simple web browser, and therefore on a computer as well as on a telephone, tablet or connected TV. Many do so in defiance of the law, broadcasting meetings reserved for pay channels and making money from advertising. Although this practice is obviously prohibited, it is hugely successful, to the point that some consider it “tolerated”. It must be recognized that it is within everyone’s reach: all you have to do is type a query like “free football match streaming” into a search engine such as Google to find a multitude of sites offering this “service ” – more than 60 million results. In the genre of filtering, we do better… Here are some examples of well-known sites allowing you to watch matches live.
Foot-Direct
As its name clearly suggests, this entirely French website is dedicated to live broadcast matches. Its home page displays the schedule of matches (schedules and teams) listed in chronological order from the current day, and a LIVE button gives free access to streaming in the browser. Foot-Direct is not limited to Euro 2021 and offers the same service for all major football competitions, national and international (Ligue 1, Ligue 2, Premier League, LaLiga, Champions League, Europa League, World Cup …).
Streamonsport
Well known to sports fans, Steamonsport is not limited to football, but offers free streaming in all kinds of disciplines (rugby, basketball, Formula 1, tennis, handball, etc.). Entirely in French, the site offers a detailed program of matches with, for each, a link opening a tab directly to display the streaming in the browser, all for free.
Live TV
As the name suggests, LiveTV allows you to watch live sports events on the web for free. The site offers many football competitions (World Cup, Champions League, Ligue 1, Ligue 2, English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, Spanish Primera Division, etc.), but also other sports such as basketball or ice Hockey. Operating in peer-to-peer, it relies on a community of users (registration required but free to participate) and has a video archive section. Note that the site often offers several links to follow a match live, with a flag indicating the language of the comments and a reliability index indicating the quality the quality of the connection.
SportLemon.tv
Well known to specialists and easily accessible, sportLemon.tv broadcasts many sporting events in the most popular disciplines, and in particular football. The site plays the community card and encourages its users to share links, which are not always reliable. It is possible to customize certain choices to take advantage of a suggestion system, like on YouTube.
Stream2Watch
Covering many sports (baseball, basketball, boxing, golf, tennis, hockey), Stream2Watch offers streaming football matches in its soccer section, with quality up to 4K. As often on this kind of site, you have to juggle with windows and other advertising tabs, sometimes untimely. The meeting agenda is very clear and we have a search engine and even a chat service.
In addition to these well-established platforms, there are a host of sites of variable quality and sometimes dubious legality, such as Rojadirecta, ESPN, JackHD, LivesoccertvWhere, FooliveMe, Hotstar, ATDHE, Social442, Sports.ru, VIPsports or Soccer Programs. This time, in addition to intrusive advertisements – such as pop-up windows -, it is necessary to master English or other languages to navigate, but also to use a VPN or a proxy to overcome the limitations. territorial links linked to location by IP address. Note that some of these specialized sites, which are not all limited to football, provide access to local competitions, little followed by broadcasters in France, and obviously commented in very different languages - remembering that our football is is calling soccer in the USA.
Note also that it is possible to follow matches live on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, some members broadcasting matches on video on their page or giving a streaming link, flouting of course the rules… A search by words keys on a match night is enough to measure the extent of the phenomenon.
Finally, let us point out a totally illegal practice – and leading to legal proceedings accompanied by heavy fines – which consists of using playlists in M3U format giving access to IPTV streams. More delicate to implement, this technique is obviously to be totally prohibited, especially since Arcom – a new body born from the merger of Hadopi and CSA – is waging a ruthless war against pirate sites and IPTV services. , especially the broadcast of sporting events! Note that following the measures taken by Arcom, access to certain streaming sites may be blocked by ISPs. A blockage which is often easy to circumvent by changing the DNS, the international Internet directories which establish the correspondence between the addresses in letters – the URLs – and the IP addresses of the sites – see our practical sheet on changing DNS.