Unfortunately, the BBC no longer has the live broadcast rights to the Ryder Cup.  They lost them in 2013 when the costs simply became unjustifiable for a public broadcaster. From this point the UK rights were bought out Sky who have invested heavily in most major sports events.   The Ryder cup is held once every two years, alternating between Europe and the USA, Sky created specific TV channels for the event in 2014 onwards.

The BBC do still pay for a highlights package and for the non-golf fanatic then it’s a great option usually broadcast the evening of each day.  However for many it’s simply not enough, fortunately you should be able to find coverage in most European countries and across North America pretty easily.  For the full live coverage, NBC have the current US rights in 2018 and have had for over twenty years.

However if you’re in a country where you can’t watch the Ryder Cup then you can get access using a VPN or Smart DNS system.  Using these you can effectively bypass any country restriction – so you can watch NBC from outside the US or enjoy the BBC highlights by using a UK server.

Accessing BBC Ryder Cup Coverage from Abroad

These services allow you to switch your location at will, both the VPN and Smart DNS should allow you to watch all UK television.  They can certainly give you access to the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 without any restrictions.  You can also access services like Sky as well although you will need a subscription in addition to a service to hide your location.  Sky can be quite expensive and you normally have to subscribe for a year to get the best deals.  Although it’s worth checking out NOW TV which offers the facility to get Sky Sports for a shorter period like a single month.

Remember you will need a UK VPN or a DNS service to subscribe to the subscription services too. A rather ridiculous state of affairs considering you’re paying for a product that disappears when you cross a national boundary.  However if you’re just on holiday for a short while then you can try out this free trial of a BBC VPN, it will last for 14 days so perfect if you’re travelling for a short time like a holiday.

All that happens is that your connection is routed through the country selected. SO if you want any of the UK TV channels like the BBC then you’d select a UK server, if you want a US channel you’d pick a server based in the US and so on. There’s no real complication and you’re certainly not doing anything even vaguely illegal, merely using a security service to encrypt and maintain your privacy.

The advantage of the Smart DNS system for the BBC is that it doesn’t slow your connection down. Instead of routing everything through a single connection it merely does enough to hide your location and streams the rest directly. IT means there’s no impact on your network speed, whereas the VPN will slow your connection down quite considerably in some situations.
At the worst you can use this as a free trial of BBC iPlayer plus it also gives you a decent chance to use it before you make up your mind.

Click here to try – free trial