How to Watch the Winter Olympics Online

NBC has been showered with praise for its decision to stream every event from Sochi live online on NBCOlympics.com and its NBC Sports Live Extra apps for iOS and Android. It’s the first time that’s been done for the Winter Olympics, though NBC did the same for the London Games in 2012.

That’s great news for Olympics fans who want to watch everything as it happens, since the network’s primetime telecasts will obviously be tape-delayed. The big catch: You have to be a cable or satellite subscriber.

The online streams will include both the same live coverage you’d get on NBC’s cable channels and world feeds of individual events, NBC told me. The only thing that NBC won’t be streaming online are Friday’s opening ceremonies. “We want to put context to it, with the full pageantry it deserves,” NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus semi-explained to Variety. (As viewers learned in 2012, that’s NBC-speak for Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira chortling at their own ignorance.)

Cord-cutters, on the other hand, have nothing to cheer about, unless they live outside the United States. To access the coverage, you have to log in through your cable or satellite provider or try your luck with a live stream from overseas.

On one level, it’s understandable that NBC would prefer not to make its full suite of live coverage available to people who don’t pay for its cable channels. The network paid $4.3 billion for the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2020, and it wants to maximize its return on that investment. It does feel a little insulting, though, that those who have Internet service but not a TV can’t even watch the same network telecast that’s available for free over the air. Fox, by contrast, made its live stream of the Super Bowl available to everyone.

For those determined to watch some of the Olympics live without signing up for cable, there are a handful of potential loopholes.

First, you can pick a few scraps of online coverage via a “temporary pass” that NBCOlympics.com will offer to unverified users. That’s good for 30 minutes of live streaming the first time you visit the site, but just five minutes a day thereafter, so you’ll have to plan carefully.

Second, you can of course watch NBC’s primetime coverage over the air if you have a digital antenna. The broadcast coverage starts Thursday at 8 p.m. eastern, and you can find a full listings of times and events here.

Third, perhaps you know someone who has a cable-TV username and password and would be willing to share. You’d probably be breaking the law to take advantage of this, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from doing it—or even writing New York Times stories about it.

Finally, depending on your scruples, you can take advantage of the fact that the United Kingdom and Canada do not discriminate against cord-cutters. As Forbes’ Amadou Diallo explains in his excellent guide to watching the Sochi Olympics without a cable bill, both the BBC and the CBC will offer extensive free live coverage of the events to online viewers in their respective markets. The catch is that your access will be blocked if you try to watch from the United States. It’s possible to get around this restriction using a virtual private network, or VPN, which can be configured to replace your normal IP address with one based in a different country.

As with logging in via someone else’s account, this is clearly against the terms of service for both the BBC and the CBC. Forbes’ Diallo goes into a lot of detail about the legality/illegality of using a VPN to watch overseas coverage. The short version: It’s very unlikely you’ll be prosecuted. So I guess the question is, just how badly do you want to watch the Winter Olympics?

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How to watch the Winter Olympics online

Live streaming the Winter Olympics online has become as much of a tradition as the torch-lighting ceremony because TV networks haven't been willing to broadcast the games in real-time through normal channels. The 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia are going to be no different as the host city is half-way around the world for many fans.

In the past, time-zone differences have meant watching tape-delayed events on TV, including some of the most popular sports: figure skating, alpine skiing, snowboarding and hockey. The internet, especially Twitter, has played spoiler to who won the gold medal in each.

But the web has also provided a solution through online streaming more Olympic events than any one network can handle. NBC for one plans to air more than 1,500 hours of Winter Games coverage through its TV networks, websites and apps.

It's a vast amount of content, but finding the more than 1,000 hours that are supposed to be streamed through the web has become an Olympic sport of its own and requires practice, practice, practice.

Watching from a much warmer vantage point

Watch the Games on the web

The Olympics are truly an international sporting event with NBC in the US, BBC in the UK, CBC in Canada, and Network Ten in Australia all promising snow-wall-to-snow-wall coverage on the web.
NBC is putting hard numbers behind that promise, saying it'll stream every single medal-winning performance of all 98 events in all 15 winter sport disciplines through NBCOlympics.com.
That's easier said than done. Users must first pass through NBC's strict authentication methods that require logging in via a cable or satellite account. This means cord cutters and over-the-air antenna watchers are locked out.

Sorry, cord cutters. A cable or satellite account is required in the US.

Once authenticated, it's up to NBC to make good on its promise to competently stream the Games. The #nbcfail hashtag was born two years ago out of users' frustration at buffering times during the Summer Olympic Games in London. It was impossible to faithfully watch a second of some of the most popular streams in real-time; the 100-meter dash consisted of a starting gun and an instant winner thanks to choppy video. This year will hopefully be different.


Canada, through the CBC, has restrictions in place so that non-Canadian geo-tagged IP addresses prevent them from tapping into the network's live Opening Ceremony feed. A VPN workaround is required to watch it in the morning vs its tape-delayed broadcast on NBC.

The BBC will attempt a similar feat in the UK through its BBC Sport website boasting six HD streams with a total of 650 hours of Winter Olympics coverage.
In Australia, the Ten Network has the rights to broadcast the Olympics and a streaming platform to go along with that via its Ten Play website.

Watch the Games on a mobile device

Live streaming through smartphones and tablets is more prevalent at the Sochi Winter Olympics compared to four years ago when the Vancouver Games were held. After all, the iPad hadn't even been announced at the time.

Networks are no longer turning a cold shoulder to tiny screens, with apps available on all three major platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8.

iOS, Android, Windows Phone: A triple appxel

In fact, NBC has two apps dedicated to its 1,000-plus hours of mobile streaming content. NBC Sports Live Extra and its second-screen NBC Olympics Highlights and Results. Live Extra is obviously the more desired app of the two due to its live streaming capabilities, but like the NBCOlympics.com website, it too requires account authentication.


The official CBC Sochi 2014 app is the best way for Canadian viewers to watch the games on the go from an iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 device.

The BBC Sport app works on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, and while we haven't found a way for Windows Phone 8 users to enjoy the games in the UK, the network is catering to owners of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets.

Australia's Ten Network has live mobile feed has eight simultaneous streams available on both iOS and Android devices.

How to stream to a TV

Appreciating the frozen landscape of Sochi, Russia by watching the Winter Olympics on a normal-sized TV without a cable box or a satellite dish requires some extra gadgets.
The easiest way is to beam the streaming picture from an Apple computer, smartphone or tablet to an Apple TV via AirPlay mirroring. This wireless connection beats having to run wires from a device to the television, and Google's Chromecast doesn't have similar mirroring just yet.
This is as long as NBC doesn't disable AirPlay mirroring like Fox Sports Go did for the English version of its Super Bowl live streaming app earlier this week. For some reason, the Spanish-language feed worked just fine.

Apple TV or a regular old HDMI cord can do the trick

Alternatively, you can always run an HDMI or Mini DisplayPort cable from a computer or laptop to the TV for the hardwired method of porting the small-screen picture to an HDTV.
Finally, folks in Australia will be able to download the Xbox One and Xbox 360 Ten Play app to conveniently stream coverage of the Olympics to their HDTVs via Microsoft's consoles.

How to watch the Opening Ceremony

Online streaming of the Winter Olympics starts off with a whimper rather a starting pistol bang because several TV networks won't be streaming the elaborate Opening Ceremony. Most time zones would have to air the choreographed spectacle in the morning.
The Opening Ceremony will be tape-delayed to 7:30 p.m. EST in the United States, but America's neighbor to the north will be streaming it live.

The problem is that geo-tagged IP addresses are sure to turn away US viewers wanting to tap. Setting up a VPN ahead of time could give you a nine hour jump on the Opening Ceremony.
Seeing this four-hour live stream, including the seemingly endless parade of athletes, at 11:30 EST may come down to whether or not your IP address is turned away at the border.

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