Tennis: How to watch the Australian Open from abroad

Every January, the tennis season opens in style with the Australian Open in Melbourne - the first Grand Slam of the year and, thanks to its mid-summer heat and famously fast courts, one of the most entertaining. Two weeks of five-set drama at Melbourne Park set the tone for the whole season: breakthrough runs, comebacks from the sport’s biggest names, and finals that stretch deep into the Melbourne night.

For fans outside Australia, though, the “Happy Slam” comes with two obstacles: brutal time zones and geo-blocked streams. Both are solvable. Here is how to watch the Australian Open from abroad.

The time zone problem (and why it's also an opportunity)

Melbourne runs roughly 11 hours ahead of GMT in January. For European viewers, that means day sessions start around midnight to the early hours, while the evening sessions - where the biggest matches are scheduled - begin at a very sociable 8am–9am European time. American fans have it tougher, with marquee matches landing in the late US evening and overnight.

In other words: for much of the world, the Australian Open is breakfast tennis. With the right stream, you can watch a Grand Slam quarter-final over your morning coffee - no other major offers that.

The geo-blocking problem

Broadcast rights for the Australian Open are sold country by country. In Australia, the tournament airs free-to-air with every court streamed online - but only for viewers with an Australian IP address. In Europe, Eurosport and discovery+ have carried the tennis in recent years; in the US it is ESPN; the UK, Asia and other regions have their own carriers, usually behind subscriptions.

Each of these services checks your IP address before playing video. If you are outside the licensed territory, you are blocked. That leaves travelling Australians cut off from their free home coverage, subscribers unable to use services they pay for while abroad, and fans in poorly served countries with no good option at all.

The fix: watch with a VPN and the IP address of your choice

A VPN service lets you unblock the internet and watch the Australian Open from anywhere in the world, on the channel of your choice, without geographic restrictions. The VPN routes your connection through an encrypted tunnel to a server in another country, so streaming platforms see that country’s IP address instead of yours.

• Want the Australian free-to-air coverage? Connect to Le VPN's Australia server and stream with an Australian IP, exactly as locals do.
• Have a European or American subscription? Connect to a server in that country and log in as if you were home.

Setting it up with Le VPN takes minutes:

1. Subscribe on the plans page - your first purchase is covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
2. Install the app on your devices (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android - up to 10 simultaneous connections per account).
3. Connect to Australia - or whichever country's coverage you prefer, from the list of servers in 100+ locations across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa.
4. Check your virtual location on the IP address test page.
5. Open the broadcaster's site or app and enjoy a fortnight of Grand Slam tennis, live or on replay.

More than two weeks of tennis

The same VPN that unlocks Melbourne Park works all year round. You can unblock the foreign media of your choice - follow American and British TV series on their home platforms, stream music services from any region, and keep up with news sites wherever you travel. One subscription, the whole open internet.

And there is a serious security bonus. Le VPN encrypts your connection with strong AES-256 encryption, making your personal data unreadable even if your connection is intercepted - invaluable on the hotel and airport Wi-Fi where travelling tennis fans do most of their streaming. Choose from OpenVPN, WireGuard, Stealth WireGuard and IPSec/IKEv2 protocols: WireGuard is the go-to for fast HD sport, while Stealth WireGuard’s obfuscation gets you connected in countries that restrict VPN traffic itself.

Game on

The Australian Open rewards the fans who show up live: the five-set epics, the upsets, the champions announcing themselves in the January heat. Don’t let an IP address - or a time zone - decide what you get to see. Sign up to Le VPN and enjoy the internet, and the tennis, by your own rules.