NFL Game Pass in Europe, Asia, and Elsewhere

If you’re abroad and want to watch NFL games, live or later, the best option is to pay for it: NFL Game Pass is the official service that allows you to stream games from outside the United States. It’s ideal for football fans who live outside the US or are traveling. Here are the details about Game Pass and some of my experiences using it over the years.

Of course, you may be able to stream NFL games from some dodgy website (as I once did for the Super Bowl in Thailand) but it can be unreliable and irritating. Or you could carefully avoid the score and secretly download the entire game hours or days later – but this can be just as annoying. And, certain games never get uploaded anyway.

I first began using NFL Game Pass to stream games from my team (Atlanta Falcons) whilst living in Japan several years ago. (I still live in Japan, and I still use Game Pass.)

I also used NFL Game Pass while traveling through Europe during the 2014 season. It worked excellently in every country I was in. On NFL Game Pass, the video stream is crisp and fast, the controls work well (except when they don’t – see below) and you can watch games live or start them anytime you want.

NFL Game Pass is only available to people physically outside the United States; the service detects where you are to make sure. I believe there is now a Game Pass app for phones, but I’ve never used it. I just stream them on my laptop.

Read on to see my experiences with NFL Game Pass, especially when I was trekking through Europe and I never missed a game.

NFL Game Pass: Pros

• You can watch a game any time. Watch live if your schedule permits, or start at the beginning if the game is already underway or has finished.
• The controls are good. Left and right arrow keys skip a few seconds behind or forward (nice for your own instant replay). You can automatically jump to key plays or choose other audio broadcasts to listen to. The controls disappear after a few seconds so you can see the whole screen with a minimum of clutter.
• The scores are hidden on all Game Pass web pages. Safely go to the website and log in; you can only see if a game is final or not. No scores are shown, though there is an option to show them if you want (you have to be logged in). Remember this is the Game Pass website only, which in 2019 is now at nflgamepass.com; the home NFL website does show scores. Also, these games are the regular network broadcasts, so scores from other games may be mentioned on-screen in the crawl. Avoiding scores: it’s a game all itself.
• The video is high-quality. Unless your connection is slow, then it goes to a lower-res version. But it always bounces back, or attempts to.
• No commercials. The TV commercials are present in live or recently-finished games, but for games that finished a few hours ago commercials are neatly excised and you can watch the game straight through without interruption. It’s almost worth waiting for, if you despise commercials as much as I do.

NFL Game Pass: Cons

• Starting a game that’s already underway. If you start a stream during a game – say, the second quarter is happening live right now – you’ll jump immediately to the current point in the game. If you don’t want to know the score yet, you have to take precautions to not spoil it. I mute my computer, shield as much of the screen as I can with my hand and arm, and move the slider at the bottom back to the start of the game. Then it’s ok. But be careful.
• Too-wide screen. I have had problems in the past, for several seasons, with the video window accidentally getting too wide and going beyond my screen. This meant I couldn’t use the controls to go full-screen. I haven’t seen this problem since 2017; maybe they finally fixed it. (This was on desktop; I’ve never used Game Pass on my phone.)
• Commercials. During live or recently-finished games, you do have to sit through the regular network commercials. Skipping ahead 10 seconds gets through them but that feature isn’t lightning fast, because you eventually hit the limit of the cache. The commercials are often for American products and TV shows that, by nature, Game Pass viewers wouldn’t be interested in or have access to anyway.

Example: An NFL Game Pass Season Abroad

When the 2014 NFL season began I was living in Osaka, Japan. That October I headed to Sweden to begin a long backtracking trek down through Europe, with my laptop. This is the list of where I watched each of the Atlanta Falcons’ games that year. (Most games were watched within a few hours after they’d actually begun. Few were actually live, thanks to time differences and being busy sightseeing.)

Week 1: New Orleans vs Atlanta — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 2: Atlanta vs Cincinnati — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 3: Tampa Bay vs Atlanta — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 4: Atlanta vs Minnesota — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 5: Atlanta vs New York Giants — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 6: Chicago vs Atlanta — OSAKA, JAPAN
Week 7: Atlanta vs Baltimore — MARIEHAMN, ÅLAND
Week 8: Detroit vs Atlanta — VALKA, LATVIA
Week 9: Bye
Week 10: Atlanta vs. Tampa Bay – WARSAW, POLAND
Week 11: Atlanta vs. Carolina – KRAKOW, POLAND
Week 12: Cleveland vs. Atlanta – PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Week 13: Arizona vs. Atlanta – BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA
• I watched this game live as it happened, late at night in Bratislava. Sometimes the timing works out like that.
Week 14: Atlanta vs. Green Bay – BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
Week 15: Pittsburgh vs. Atlanta – PTUJ, SLOVENIA
Week 16: Atlanta vs. New Orleans – PIRAN, SLOVENIA
Week 17: Carolina vs. Atlanta – VARAŽDIN, CROATIA
Super Bowl XLIX (New England vs. Seattle) – TIRANA, ALBANIA
• I paid an extra $10 just for this game, which I watched live from 12:30 to 4:00 am local time.

All in all, NFL Game Pass proves itself useful and reliable for watching games while outside the United States. The ease of use makes the price worth it, if you don’t want to miss anything during the season.

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