The Copa América, American Cup yearly football soccer tournament, is the top championship of South America since its official inauguration back in 1916, and was originally called the South American Football Championship, until officially changing to American Cup in 1975. The historically rich tournament has origins dating back as early as the late-1800’s, but fast forward to today, with the latest format established in 1993, and three groups of four teams compete for the cup. Because there are only ten CONMEBOL teams in South America, two invited nations are added from other FIFA confederations to fill the missing spots.
Now with Champion’s League behind us, football fans across the world will have their eyes glued on watching Copa America for a full month. With every group match counting as a best out of 3 qualification round to the finals, every moment promises excitement for football fans.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Copa America, and for the first time the tournament will be hosted by the United States, combining all American teams in a total of 4 groups and 16 national teams. The six additional teams from CONCACAF include the hosts United States, as well as Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, and Costa Rica. The championship is one of the most watched sporting events worldwide, and this year’s centennial ‘centenario’ championship is crossing borders and will undoubtedly be of historical importance.
The official kickoff is just days away for this year’s 2016 American Cup, and as time brings change, the way we can watch sports worldwide has significantly improved thanks to online streams and broadcasting. Unfortunately, if you do not currently live in one of the participating team’s countries, you’re unlikely to have full local television coverage of every, or any, game and broadcasting websites are often geographically locked. So how do you watch the American Cup online?
How to Stream Copa America in High Quality
Unfortunately, unless you’re familiar with VPNs or DNS proxies, you’re unlikely to know that you can unlock geographically blocked website services, such as sports websites streaming football games. Most users opt for searching pirated stream websites online, but the stream quality on video and sound is usually heavily compromised due to all the visitors, and the bandwidth is always maxing out, causing the video to freeze and start buffering at the worst possible moments. Not to mention that the illegal nature of these streaming websites often comes with malicious code, and virus downloads from the dozens of pop-ups and ads you need to close before getting to the actual stream. Don’t waste your time, or risk infecting your computer.
Instead, you can opt for a VPN service to quickly connect to encrypted servers in any country in the world and unlock the local Copa America streams from various sports broadcasters. There are several online services that broadcast the American Cup and even Netflix is rumored to be possibly broadcasting this 2016 Copa America in both South America and Canada. Here is a list of some of the confirmed and expected broadcasting streams.
- FoxSports (USA)
- Univision (USA – Spanish)
- SporTV, Globo (Brazil)
- CTV (Canada)
- Caracol TV (Colombia)
- Premier Sports (United Kingdom)
- Canal 13 (Chili)
- TV Publica, Telefe (Argentina)
- ESPN (Latin America)
- beIN Sports (Middle East)
- Televisa, TV Azteca (Mexico)
- Ran (Germany)
- Arena Sport (Eastern Europe)
How to use a VPN to stream Copa America Online
Using a VPN is the easiest, and simplest way to unlock international streaming websites. Simply signup to a VPN service and connect to a server in the country you need to stream from, eg: United States for Fox Sports or Univision, or UK for Premier Sports. Next, just browse to the website to watch the games, and it will no longer tell you that the service is not available in your region. There are some extra steps to take which I generally advise.
- Signup to VPN service, download app for your device, and launch.
- Connect to server in the country of the online soccer stream website.
- Use OpenVPN protocol with UDP for best streaming performance.
- Browse to any online stream for that country, switch countries for different streams.
Many big VPN services have servers across the globe, giving you international access to the web without any censorship, or geo-fencing. Although they cost money, the monthly or yearly subscription plans are well worth it, but as far as unlocking online streaming for the American Cup, the championship will be played through the month of June, so you really only need to pay a small fee for a single month of service. Here are the best VPNs to watch Copa America online.
Best VPNs for Copa America
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How to Use SmartDNS to Stream the American Cup Online
If you’re familiar with unblocking geo-fenced services with VPNs, you might also know about DNS proxies, which can perform similar tasks, but are essentially different. It does not encrypt your data, but can still make it look like your connection is in any country in the world, which allows you to unlock most online streams. SmartDNS services can get blocked just like Netflix, but they do have the advantage of being supported directly on gaming consoles like PS4 and Xbox, and SmartTVs. The process is the same, but the configuration is different, some services will automatically change the DNS settings for you based on the country you need, while others require you to input the DNS addresses on your device, and provide step by step instructions.
- Signup to SmartDNS service, download app, or sign-in.
- Follow instructions for setting up DNS service.
- Once completed, you can browse to online streams.
Some VPN services inlcude SmartDNS, such as ExpressVPN or Overplay, and that means you get twice the value for the same price. I usually advise to use SmartDNS with VPN for the security of encryption, but if you’re looking for a seamless SmartDNS service, Unblock-Us is probably your best bet. Regardless, here are the best options for both VPN and just DNS proxy service.
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Conclusion
That pretty much covers how you can watch Copa America online for free, (besides the VPN service cost) but completely legally, and on high quality streams that won’t drop, freeze or completely stop just as your team takes the offensive. You also get high quality audio that won’t screech your ears or make your guests flee. As you can tell, using a VPN will not only allow you to unblock international soccer championships, but just about any web service such as Netflix, Hulu, and so on. The internet is vast and full of content. But for now, let’s enjoy the American Cup this month streaming across the best international channels available.
