VPN and Dolphins games

[Pappy13]

Update on my quest to get the Dolphins on my computer using a VPN. It's a no go. I think this used to work, but more and more I'm of the opinion that all these services have figured out how to beat the VPN at least for the NFL anyway. My latest attempt was to go through Paramount plus which is an affiliate of CBS Sports which has the local Miami games. Apparently last year if you had a Paramount Plus subscription you could log into that and watch the local CBS Miami channel by setting your VPN to Miami. Not anymore. It doesn't work. Not just for me but for anyone. I've seen several Reddit threads from people that said it worked last year and it doesn't work this year. I have a Paramount Plus account and it doesn't work for me. When I log into Paramount Plus and go to live TV, I get the Texas affiliate, not the Miami affiliate even though my VPN is connected to a Miami server and I have location guard set to Miami as well.

I think what's happening is that when you log into Paramount Plus it looks at your address that is associated with your credit card and if it says Texas, then you get the Texas channels. That's got to be what's happening because it's the only thing associating me with Texas. I have the VPN connected to a Miami server and I have location guard set to Miami as well and it still knows I live in Texas. With NFL Game Pass, if I have the VPN connected it won't show me any games, it's only if I disconnect the VPN that I can then watch games via Game Pass and with that you can't even watch local games on your computer, only over a mobile device so now I don't think I'll even be able to watch the Miami games on my phone with the VPN installed. I still hold out some hope that I might be able to "trick" the service by initially logging in without the VPN and then enabling the VPN after I have the game pulled up but even that seems sketchy at this point.

Maybe it still works to actually set your VPN to India and actually purchase a package that allows you to watch the NFL from India which I haven't tried yet, but I'm not doing that. Between paying for the VPN and an account to watch the NFL from India, I might as well just get youtube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket. The price difference wouldn't be that much different, it would probably be a much better service and you avoid all the crazy shit you have to do to try to jump through hoops to make it work. The NFL is just too big and too good to defeat them. Might as well just join them. It's actually not that crazy expensive anymore. $80 a month for NFL Sunday Ticket. That's a lot but it's only for 4 months and Youtube TV might actually be better than some of these other streaming services I'm using now. I can maybe cancel a few of them and get part of that money back. I think this VPN was a waste of money. Can't recommend it for watching NFL out of market games. The NFL has it covered. At least it seems that way to me.

[Pappy13]

Who is your phone carrier?   If it's not Verizon, you may want to consider switching to them.  They allow you to watch NFL games live on your mobile device.  All you have to do is mirror screen it onto your TV.

Ok, was reading through the comments in this thread again and noticed this that I missed the first time. I have T-Mobile who has merged with Verizon if I'm not mistaken so maybe this will work. How do you watch the games? At this point I'll settle for being able to watch the games on my iPhone. I don't think I'll even mess with trying to cast it to my TV.

Edit. I was mistaken, T-Mobile merged with Sprint, not Verizon. You'd think I'd know this since I used to work for both Sprint and Verizon, but that's been around 15 years ago now that I worked for Verizon and over 20 since I worked for Sprint. But I think I can watch local games on my phone with the NFL app, what I want is to watch the Miami games on my phone which I don't think I'm going to be able to do unless maybe I get that location spoofing app that Fau mentioned. If that works that might be something but then I didn't need the VPN and it's still not on my PC which is really what I was wanting to accomplish with the VPN. Yeah I guess I could try to cast my phone to my TV, but it's not really what I wanted to do. Not sure my TV can even do that. It's a Smart TV, but it's not that Smart.

[Spider-Dan]

Now that Sunday Ticket is finally available without a satellite dish, I'm strongly considering ordering it to watch the Dolphins this year.  The sketchy streaming sites are a headache and $300 isn't what it used to be.

[Dave Gray]

Now that Sunday Ticket is finally available without a satellite dish, I'm strongly considering ordering it to watch the Dolphins this year.  The sketchy streaming sites are a headache and $300 isn't what it used to be.

Do you / would you watch the games alone?

I've never been a fan of a team out of market, so I don't know how that would go, but I would probably have a much better time of it if I had a partner to watch with or a Dolphins watch party or sponsored bar or something.

Even here in S. Florida, I have a group of people that gather every single week to watch.  It's part of the ritual.  Rarely do I watch a game alone.

[fyo]

Maybe it still works to actually set your VPN to India and actually purchase a package that allows you to watch the NFL from India which I haven't tried yet, but I'm not doing that.

This reportedly (also) doesn't work anymore. The NFL sold the international streaming rights to DAZN and their system of VPN and location detection is supposedly much more robust. I've seen some claims that DAZN is very country-segmented and will only let you use the country-specific version that matches the country of issue of your credit card. (That would open one possible way of circumventing, but getting something like a prepaid card in a foreign country isn't trivial.)

[Fau Teixeira]

So far so good for me watching dolphins games on youtube TV when my location is set to brian's house !

not just dolphins games .. if i wanted, i could watch WSVN 7 on my tv right now within 3 minutes by just setting my phone GPS to miami and logging in on my phone .. it detects south florida and changes all my local stations accordingly

This workaround (while it works) isn't NFL specific .. it's local station specific

[Pappy13]

Do you / would you watch the games alone?

I've never been a fan of a team out of market, so I don't know how that would go, but I would probably have a much better time of it if I had a partner to watch with or a Dolphins watch party or sponsored bar or something.

Even here in S. Florida, I have a group of people that gather every single week to watch.  It's part of the ritual.  Rarely do I watch a game alone.

I sometimes will head to a restaurant that has the Sunday Ticket with all the games playing, however I go alone. I don't know anyone here that is a Dolphin fan. If you count the money I'm spending by doing this each game, it would be cheaper to just watch the games from my home using the NFL Sunday Ticket. Not sure I want to do that just yet as I can watch the games on replay currently within about an hour of the game being played. I typically follow the game on my PC and I can even listen to the broadcast if I choose and then I'll watch the game on replay in it's condensed form. It's not bad. It's not live, but it's not bad and it's pretty cheap to do this.

I've requested a refund from NordVPN since they have a 30 day money back guarantee. Even though the service works it doesn't do what they advertise because their advertising states that you can watch out of market NFL games on Games Pass with nothing but the VPN service which is blatantly not true. We'll see how that goes.

[pondwater]

Now that Sunday Ticket is finally available without a satellite dish, I'm strongly considering ordering it to watch the Dolphins this year.  The sketchy streaming sites are a headache and $300 isn't what it used to be.

I haven't had any issues with my sketchy streaming site for 5-6 years