The international T20 circuit has expanded significantly in recent years with the Pakistan Super League, Bangladesh Premier League, Big Bash League, and even the Caribbean Premier League clamoring for audiences, advertisers, and big-name stars. But the undoubted holy grail of T20 competitions is the Indian Premier League (IPL). It’s the richest, snazziest, and the most ostentatious affair.
In this article, we’ll show you how to watch the 2021 IPL live online, including free and legal options from official broadcasters. Some of the online channels are region-locked, so you might need a VPN to access your home services while traveling abroad in the USA, UK or various other countries. We recommend NordVPN to watch from abroad. More on that below.
Where to live stream IPL 2021 online
These are the official online broadcasters for live IPL 2021 coverage:
- India
- Disney+ Hotstar: INR 1,499 per year
- UK
- Sky Sports: Free with a cable subscription and available to stream via the Sky Go app. If you don’t want to commit to a Sky Sports contract, you can subscribe to Now TV for live access to all Sky Sports channels. Prices start at £25 per month or £9.99 for a single day.
- Hotstar UK: This option has not been confirmed as of time of writing, but may stream IPL 2021 online.
- US
- Willow TV: Available for free if you log in with your cable subscriber. Cord cutters can get Willow TV online from Sling TV for an additional $10 per month on top of a standard subscription. A 7-day free trial is available.
- Hotstar US: $49.99 per year, no free trial
Unfortunately, online availability depends on where you live. If you try to access any of these streaming channels from outside of their respective countries, you’ll probably encounter an alert message like this:
Disney+ Hotstar: INR 1,499 per year
Sky Sports: Free with a cable subscription and available to stream via the Sky Go app. If you don’t want to commit to a Sky Sports contract, you can subscribe to Now TV for live access to all Sky Sports channels. Prices start at £25 per month or £9.99 for a single day.
Hotstar UK: This option has not been confirmed as of time of writing, but may stream IPL 2021 online.
Willow TV: Available for free if you log in with your cable subscriber. Cord cutters can get Willow TV online from Sling TV for an additional $10 per month on top of a standard subscription. A 7-day free trial is available.
Hotstar US: $49.99 per year, no free trial
How to watch the IPL online for free from abroad with a VPN
To bypass the location restrictions on viewing IPL live streams, the easiest solution is a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN lets you route your internet connection through another country so you can unblock region-locked content.
So if you’re traveling outside of India, you can use a VPN to access streams from back home, rather than paying for a foreign streaming service.
To access most streaming services while traveling abroad and watch the 2021 IPL from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or anywhere else in the world, you’ll need a VPN to “spoof” your location.
Here’s how it’s done:
- Sign up for a VPN with fast servers in India. We recommend NordVPN.
- Download the VPN app for your device and install it.
- Open the app and set the location to India. This will give you an Indian IP address.
- Hit the Connect button.
- Once the connection has been established, head over to Disney+ Hotstar India and start streaming the IPL live online!
If you’re subscribed to one of the other paid streaming options listed above, but you’re not in the right country, you can also use a VPN to access those streams. Just change the VPN server location to the US for Sling TV, Willow TV or Hotstar US. For UK streams, select a server in the UK to access Sky Sports and Now TV.
Unnofficial streams: Warning
Users may find there’s a bunch of options when it comes to generic searches on free IPL streams. We don’t recommend such live streams simply because they’re full of nasty things like malware, spyware, and annoying pop-up advertisements. They also operate in a legal gray area and their sole purpose is to drive traffic towards affiliate sites.
Finding such streams isn’t hard – a bit of digging on Reddit and Google will do the trick – but they’re unreliable, clunky, and almost certainly of inferior quality. Excessive use of these ‘free’ live streams will result in things like viruses and reduced system performance. Users may think they’re getting away by paying nothing but the long-term impact is pretty clear.
Comparitech does not condone or encourage any violation of copyright restrictions. Please consider the law, victims, and risks of piracy before downloading copyrighted material without permission.
IPL Schedule 2021
All times are in Indian Standard Time (UTC+05:30)
