Blackouts and VPN Experience

[George Zuverink]

I am curious about the range of experiences other people have had using VPNs with MLB.com. Last summer i discovered that MLB.com blocks O’s games in Eastern NC but not Western. While in Wilmington  NC Express VPN worked one night but not for the rest of the week. We were on an Adriatic cruise last fall and Express VPN didn’t give access at all.This summer we are in the South of France we’ve been able to watch every game except one on Fox.

What have other people found?

[Greg Pappas]

48 minutes ago, George Zuverink said:

I am curious about the range of experiences other people have had using VPNs with MLB.com. Last summer i discovered that MLB.com blocks O’s games in Eastern NC but not Western. While in Wilmington  NC Express VPN worked one night but not for the rest of the week. We were on an Adriatic cruise last fall and Express VPN didn’t give access at all.This summer we are in the South of France we’ve been able to watch every game except one on Fox.

What have other people found?

I use Express VPN and have MLB.tv and use it to watch games, unless they are on Fox, Amazon, etc.  99% of the time I get to watch the game when the American city I select on Express VPN is the farthest away from Baltimore AND whomever we are playing.

Thus, when we play against an East Coast team, I choose a place like Los Angeles. or San Francisco.  If we play a West Coast team, I choose Miami, Dallas or Atlanta.  When we play a Central team I typically use Seattle.

However, something that I must do beforehand is to be sure I log in to MLB.tv without the VPN on, and after closing out of the browser, I turn on the VPN, choose my city strategically (as noted above), and then get back onto my browser and go to MLB.tv.  I hope this helps.

[George Zuverink]

49 minutes ago, Greg Pappas said:

I use Express VPN and have MLB.tv and use it to watch games, unless they are on Fox, Amazon, etc.  99% of the time I get to watch the game when the American city I select on Express VPN is the farthest away from Baltimore AND whomever we are playing.

Thus, when we play against an East Coast team, I choose a place like Los Angeles. or San Francisco.  If we play a West Coast team, I choose Miami, Dallas or Atlanta.  When we play a Central team I typically use Seattle.

However, something that I must do beforehand is to be sure I log in to MLB.tv without the VPN on, and after closing out of the browser, I turn on the VPN, choose my city strategically (as noted above), and then get back onto my browser and go to MLB.tv.  I hope this helps.

Thanks. I suspect that when I was in Wilmington I accidentally did things in the right order the first day and never thereafter. 

[Jagwar]

When I lived in CT, I used to get blacked out of all NYY and BOS games on MLBTV. At the time they played 19 games per season each. Blacked out of 38 freaking games. Almost 25%. I tried all sorts of VPNs on my Roku, Fire Stick and laptop. It was hit or miss, but overwhelmingly miss. I don't know if it was the VPN stinking or MLB thwarting the effort, but it was frustrating

Eventually the only reliable VPN was in Norton 360, and that was only on my laptop. 

[elextrano8]

I'm in NOVA, and use Nord VPN. Honestly it's been solid on my laptop, though I don't can't really get it to work on my iphone or ipad.

Every once in a while on my laptop, it won't work initially, but in those situations it always works by the third attempt.

[Safelykept]

3 hours ago, George Zuverink said:

I am curious about the range of experiences other people have had using VPNs with MLB.com. Last summer i discovered that MLB.com blocks O’s games in Eastern NC but not Western. While in Wilmington  NC Express VPN worked one night but not for the rest of the week. We were on an Adriatic cruise last fall and Express VPN didn’t give access at all.This summer we are in the South of France we’ve been able to watch every game except one on Fox.

What have other people found?

Free VPN for Chrome, I used it for the Miami series a while back. I chose netherlands server, just have to turn it off as other sites wont recognize your browser.

[Aristotelian]

Was not happy to find myself blacked out of games on vacation in WVA four hours drive from Baltimore.

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Was not happy to find myself blacked out of games on vacation in WVA four hours drive from Baltimore.

If you live in Eastern Montana, like Miles City, you're blacked out of Mariners games. Seattle is 962 miles and 14 1/2 hours drive away.

And I'm pretty sure that Alaska is also blacked out of Mariners games, too. So you can live over 2000 miles from Safeco and not be able to watch their games. Wouldn't want anyone to have second thoughts about the hour and a half flight followed by the 40-hour one way drive to go see the game in person.

Yeah MLB!

Oh, and while I don't use a VPN for O's games, I do use it pretty regularly to watch German 3rd division soccer games. I kind of have to use SurfShark, as it's one of the least-painful VPNs to use on Linux. It works well enough most of the time to stream Bavarian state TV.

[OriolesUpAndDowns]

I would suggest ProtonVPN as the preferred VPN.  They have excellent privacy and do not keep records of traffic.  Additionally they offer packages specifically for streaming services.  
 

I put the VPN directly on the router which allows me to to stream across all platforms.  When you run into a blackout area, you can simply pick a new location where it is not blacked out.  This way you can also get games such as the Fox broadcast over the weekend. 
 

At a minimum everyone should be using a VPN for their everyday use just for general safety.  Also, don’t name your Wi-Fi your last name.  There are crowdsourced websites with Wi-Fi networks.