Hotstar is one of the only streaming platforms that offer a big portion of entertainment content for free. The issue? That Hotstar is not available in the UK anymore. In this guide? We’ll show you how to watch Hotstar sports in the UK, but this guide will also be useful for you as far as unblocking other services not available in the UK, such as RTE and DAZN.
Once upon a time, Hotstar, even though not officially available in the UK, worked in the UK.
Right now, if you try to visit it, you will be told that due to GDPR, it doesn’t work.
That’s not the real reason behind why Hotstar Sports is not in the UK.
See, Hotstar streams live sports that include the likes of the Premier League. BT Sports spends around 1 billion per year on rights to Premier League and Champions League.
If Hotstar just lets people watch that content for free, or otherwise for a fraction of the cost, BT Sports would lose subscribers.
Due to that, pressure is put on Hotstar to do something about people-watching in regions like the UK. The result? That Hotstar does not work in the UK, and you searching for how to watch Hotstar sports in the UK.
Unlike with DAZN, here you won’t need to have the right card issued in the right country to watch Hotstar.
You just need to make Hotstar think you are in India.
...But you need the right tool for that as not all the tools for that will make Hotstar sports work.
As far as being in India, to be there virtually, you need a VPN.
The VPN you get needs to be quick especially considering the UK is quite far away from India, but it also needs to be able to bypass the Hotstar block, and this is where PrivateVPN comes in as a service that doesn’t perhaps have the most servers, but instead focuses on quality which is why it works with Hotstar meanwhile many other services don’t.
Once you connect to a Hotstar server with PrivateVPN, Hotstar will work. Just like that.
Services like DAZN are very complex to set up as they require the right card, meanwhile with Hotstar, it’s just all about having the right VPN that is able to bypass the block.
Of course, PrivateVPN offers a 7-day trial that doesn’t even ask for your card, so you can just sign-up, download the app, connect to the server, and then decide on whether Hotstar is worth it.
Is that it then? Not quite.
If you want to watch through the Hotstar app, you also need to change the location of your app store, and of course, we will also talk about how to watch HotStar on a TV.
On Apple devices, to get Hotstar, you will need to log out of your iCloud account, followed by creating a new account-based either in India or the US.
If you don’t do that and decide to change the location of your current account, you will lose everything.
To create a new account, download Hotstar, and then, if you wish, switch back to your old account, and you will still have everything from both accounts.
...Or, if you wish, just download the Hotstar app from the internet as that’s possible on Android devices. However, in this case, it’s important it’s from a trusted source.
Sports are best watched on the big screen.
This is where it gets a bit complicated, though.
It’s not that platforms like the Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku don’t have a Hotstar app. It’s that they don’t support VPN services.
What does that mean?
That you can’t watch Hotstar sports in the UK on them.
The only platform that does work with VPN services? The Amazon Fire TV Stick.
Alternatively, there are a few other things you can do:
You can also, in theory, install a VPN on a router, but most routers aren’t powerful to handle VPN connections, so that would result in much slower speeds.
Want to do it through Amazon Fire TV Stick?
If you just bought one, make sure to select your location to be in the US or India to download the app.
If you already have one, here’s what we recommend you do:
Enjoyed this short guide? Why not try out unblocking other blocked platforms in the UK with our 7-day free trial that doesn’t ask for a card? We have plenty of guides on how to unblock blocked platforms on our blog, whether that’s DAZN, RTE, or Hulu.
Written by Michael Smolski.
Disclaimer: While PrivateVPN currently works with Hotstar, due to the nature of services making efforts to block VPN services, PrivateVPN, just like any other VPN, cannot guarantee that the servers will work with Hotstar non-stop at all given times.