How to Watch the IPL in the USA

While the Indian Premier League (IPL) showcases dozens of fast-paced T20 matches featuring global cricket stars, US viewers face limited access.

Contrary to information elsewhere, this year’s IPL season is not available to access on ESPN+ or Hotstar. Willow TV, a paid subscription service, holds the exclusive US broadcasting rights for the league in 2024.

We tested streaming services from around the world and found that JioCinema, which requires an Indian IP address, is the only broadcaster covering every game for free.

By using a virtual private network (VPN), you can appear to be in India by temporarily replacing your IP address, which will give you access to every IPL match for free.

You don’t need an Indian phone number to watch IPL matches on JioCinema, despite what some other websites claim. While other content on the platform does require one, our experience has shown that this isn’t true for accessing IPL games.

Not every VPN works, though. Fewer than half of VPNs offer servers in India, and JioCinema enforces strict VPN detection and geo-blocks for those that do.

To watch IPL matches live in the USA without a VPN, Willow TV is your only option. It’s available through their website or as a channel on various cable and streaming services.

Here’s how to find Willow TV on popular providers:

TV Provider	Where to Watch	Package Requirements	Monthly Price
Willow TV	Streaming service	None	$9.99
Dish	Channel 9997	Available standalone	$14.99
Sling TV	Streaming service	Available standalone	$9.99
Spectrum	Varies by region	Spectrum TV Gold	$59.99
Xfinity	Channel 3101	Willow: Cricket	$14.99

Why We Recommend Using a VPN With JioCinema

We found that using JioCinema with an Indian VPN server provided a significantly more cost-effective and enjoyable experience than Willow.

JioCinema is 100% free and matches or exceeds Willow in every area, including an excellent user interface and Full HD live streams. It’s also easily accessible using ExpressVPN, which allows you to change your virtual location to India, and it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can compare JioCinema with Willow TV in the table below:

Service Attribute	JioCinema	Willow TV
IP Address Location Required	India	USA
Streaming Quality	Full HD (1080p)	Full HD (1080p)
User Experience	Good	Poor
Commentary Language	English	English
Monthly Price	100% Free	$9.99
Free Trial Available	Not Required	No

As well as requiring a paid subscription, Willow is one of the worst streaming sites we’ve ever used. The stream would often cut to ads when we were listening to post-over commentary because Willow adds its own commercial breaks on top of Sky’s feed.

It also lacks rewind or fast-forward capabilities, and the website is extremely difficult to navigate, promoting news stories and short videos over live IPL games.

By contrast, JioCinema contains ads, but it only cuts to them during an interval of play and when commentary and analysis has stopped. Its interface is also far easier to navigate than Willow’s, with live matches easily accessible from the home page or via the ‘TATA IPL’ tab.

Though we were able to get around some of Willow’s interface challenges by accessing it as a Sling TV add-on, the issues with the broadcast remained. Regardless of price, JioCinema provides a much better overall experience to Willow.

So far in this guide, we’ve detailed the process for accessing live streams of the IPL on JioCinema with a VPN. We’ve focused on this service as it’s the only 100% free service that’s broadcasting the 2024 IPL season.

However, using a VPN, there are additional platforms available for streaming the IPL from the USA. Kayo Sports and Now (Sky Sports) are the only two services offering match broadcasts in English. To access Kayo Sports, you’ll need an Australian phone number, while Now requires a UK payment method.

You can compare these alternatives to JioCinema in the table below:

	JioCinema	Kayo Sports	Now (Sky Sports)
IP Address Location Required	India	Australia	UK
Streaming Quality	1080p (Full HD)	Up to 4K (UHD)	720p (HD)
Requires Local Phone Number	No	Can be bypassed using virtual phone number	No
Requires Local Payment Details	Not required	No	Yes
Monthly Price	100% Free	$16.25	$44.00
Free Trial	Not Required	7 days	No

We’ll detail the benefits and drawbacks of using these platforms for IPL streaming in the sections below.

Kayo Sports

Pros compared to JioCinema	Cons compared to JioCinema
Fewer ad breaks	Only available free for 7 days
Up to 4K resolution with the Basic plan	Expensive subscription plans
	Streaming on devices like Chromecast requires additional setup

Kayo Sports is an excellent sports-focused streaming service that’s broadcasted every IPL game in Australia since 2018. The website is easy to navigate and includes a dedicated IPL tab from its top navigation bar. As a premium service, IPL broadcasts on Kayo Sports contain significantly fewer ads than JioCinema and Willow.

The platform’s two subscription options are relatively expensive: the ‘One’ plan costs $16.25 and the ‘Basic’ plan costs $22.75. Both tiers have a 7-day free trial and can be purchased using a US payment method.

The main advantage to using Kayo Sports instead of JioCinema is the availability of 4K live streaming with the Basic subscription plan. This surpasses JioCinema, which is limited to 1080p (Full HD) resolution, providing an enhanced viewing experience.

We found that Kayo Sports requires your Chromecast to have an Australian IP address for streaming. Since most Chromecast devices don’t support VPN apps, you’ll have to use a VPN-enabled router or establish a VPN mobile hotspot, both of which are relatively complex solutions. In contrast, streaming to Chromecast via JioCinema does not require a VPN connection, making the setup process significantly easier.

Now (Sky Sports)

Pros compared to JioCinema	Cons compared to JioCinema
Compatible with far more VPN services	Very expensive
	Doesn’t offer a free trial
	Lower video resolution
	Requires local payment details number
	Lacks interactive video elements

Now is a popular UK-based online streaming platform from Sky Sports, which offers coverage of every IPL match in the 2024 season. Despite claims from other websites, Now is the exclusive broadcaster of the IPL in the UK, following the early termination of DAZN’s five-year contract, which ended after just one season at the end of the 2023 IPL season.

The service provides quick access to the standard Sky Sports Cricket TV channel, simply mirroring the traditional channel without integrating any interactive features. This contrasts with JioCinema, which enables you to choose from multiple camera angles and change commentary language.

Disappointingly, Now costs the equivalent of $44.00 per month and only broadcasts IPL matches in 720p resolution. Opting for Full HD quality requires an additional payment, totaling $51.50 monthly. Despite being completely free, JioCinema streams every match in Full HD.

While Now is accessible without a UK phone number, a UK-based payment method is still required. As a result, Now is no easier to access from the USA than JioCinema.

Both of these VPNs could consistently access JioCinema over a long testing period. They also have fast speeds connecting to India for streaming IPL matches in Full HD without buffering or lag.

Disappointingly, we couldn’t access the IPL on JioCinema with any completely free VPNs. Most popular free VPNs, like Windscribe Free and Proton VPN Free, lack Indian servers.

While PrivadoVPN Free, Psiphon, VPN Proxy Master, and SkyVPN offer Indian IP addresses, JioCinema consistently detected and blocked them.

Only 4 of 62 VPNs could unblock JioCinema: ExpressVPN, Surfshark, PrivateVPN, and Windscribe Pro. However, we experienced usability issues with the latter two, such as blurry video streams and persistent black screens.

In contrast, we didn’t encounter any such issues with ExpressVPN and Surfshark. Additionally, these services offer at least a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing for a risk-free trial period.

You can compare the two best VPNs for the streaming geo-blocked IPL matches in the table below:

	ExpressVPN	Surfshark
Works with JioCinema	Yes	Yes
US-Asia Download Speed	83Mbps (17% speed loss)	84Mbps (16% speed loss)
Indian Server Locations	New Delhi (via UK) and Chennai (via Singapore)	Delhi, Mumbai
Indian Servers	Undisclosed	50
Smart DNS	Doesn’t work with JioCinema	Doesn’t work with JioCinema
Cheapest Price	$6.67	$2.29
Type of Free Access	Mobile 7-day free trial & 30-day money-back guarantee	Mobile 7-day free trial & 30-day money-back guarantee

To find the very best VPNs for streaming the IPL from anywhere, we identified VPNs that matched the following criteria:

• Reliably unblocks JioCinema: We made sure each VPN successfully bypassed the geo-restrictions on JioCinema, allowing us to stream IPL matches from anywhere.
• Multiple Indian VPN server locations: Many popular VPNs don’t provide any Indian IP addresses, but we ensured to only recommend VPNs that offer multiple Indian servers, allowing you to get a new IP address if the VPN suddenly stops working with JioCinema.
• Fast international download speeds: Streaming in a high resolution without buffering requires a fast and stable connection, so we collected download speed results from multiple locations to ensure the VPN provided sufficient speeds.
• User-friendly apps for many devices: An intuitive interface makes it easy to get an Indian IP address, even if you’re a beginner. It’s also important for a VPN to be compatible with all of your devices, including Fire TV and Android TV, and not just desktop and mobile.
• Free-to-use: Though completely free VPNs are preferred, we tried workarounds to see how long we could use a premium VPN for free, either through a mobile free trial or via a money-back-guarantee.
• Private logging policy & strong security features: Some VPNs, especially free ones, don’t properly encrypt your traffic or anonymize your activity. Even if you’re only using it for IPL streaming, we only recommend using a VPN that offers AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption and using an open-sourced protocol, like WireGuard or Lightway.

During our first-hand testing of 62 VPNs with the IPL on JioCinema, we found that many usually effective VPNs couldn’t bypass the streaming service’s geo-blocks.

Here’s a list of some popular VPNs and the specific reasons they didn’t meet our criteria for IPL streaming:

VPN Service	Reason for Rejection
PIA	Failed to unblock JioCinema on all Indian servers
CyberGhost	Failed to unblock JioCinema on all Indian servers
NordVPN	Only 1 India Server location
PrivadoVPN Free	Failed to unblock JioCinema on all Indian servers
PrivateVPN	Persistent black screen during IPL streaming
Proton VPN Free	No Indian servers
Windscribe Pro	IPL stream quality was excessively blurry
Windscribe Free	No Indian servers
Atlas VPN Free	No Indian servers
TunnelBear Free	No Indian servers

JioCinema enforces strict VPN blocks to comply with its broadcasting agreement with the IPL.

Unlike most streaming sites, JioCinema will allow you to access the home page and menus on its website even if it detects a VPN connection. It will only display an error message when you try to access a video, though you will be blocked outright when using its app.

Here’s how to bypass the two most common JioCinema error messages:

“Something went wrong!”

JioCinema will display this error when it detects you are using a VPN and trying to access content on its website. You will see it immediately after clicking the video from the home screen or a sub-menu.

To bypass this error code, you will have to get an IP address that JioCinema has not banned. Make sure you are using either ExpressVPN or Surfshark. If you’re already using Surfshark, you’ll have to connect to its Delhi servers as all others are blocked. No such requirement is needed for ExpressVPN.

“Service Unavailable”

You’ll see this error message when JioCinema detects you are using a VPN and you are trying to access its mobile app. Unlike on its website, you won’t even be able to view the home screen.

To get around this, you’ll have to use a VPN that can bypass JioCinema’s geo-blocks. Subscribe to and use either ExpressVPN or Surfshark, which are two we’ve verified work with the streaming service and provide easy-to-use apps for mobile.