Yes — you can watch NOW abroad, but not straight out of the box. NOW is licensed for the UK only, so it blocks your connection the moment you travel — and it's one of the toughest services for spotting VPNs. The reliable fix is a UK residential IP, which lets your own NOW membership stream abroad exactly as it does at home.
Here's why NOW blocks you overseas, and how to get NOW Sports, Cinema and Entertainment working wherever you are.
NOW (formerly NOW TV) streams Sky's channels over the internet — no satellite dish, no engineer, no long contract. You pick the memberships you want:
That makes NOW the simplest way to get Sky Sports and Sky Atlantic without a dish — which is exactly why so many expats and travellers rely on it, and why it's such a nuisance when it stops working overseas.
Not by itself. NOW's rights are for the UK (with only limited access in a few other countries), so when you open the app abroad it checks your IP address, sees you're outside the UK, and refuses to play. Try a mainstream VPN and you'll usually hit a block too — NOW has some of the most aggressive VPN detection of any UK service, and it updates constantly.
So your paid UK NOW membership simply won't stream abroad on an ordinary connection — even though you're the one paying for it.
The reason ordinary VPNs fail is the type of IP address they use. Most run through commercial data-centre IPs, which NOW and other broadcasters recognise and block on sight.
Our SmartHub VPN routers connect through genuine UK residential broadband IPs — the same kind of connection a real home in Britain uses. To NOW, your device simply looks like an ordinary UK household, so your membership keeps working while the data-centre VPNs get shut out. It's the same reason a residential IP is the connection that beats the streaming blocks.
Nothing to configure and no codes to enter — the router provides the UK connection, and NOW does the rest.
NOW runs on phones, tablets, laptops, streaming sticks and smart TVs — and once they're on the router's Wi-Fi, they all share the same UK IP. For a proper telly experience, the Netgem PLEIO Freely box is a neat pairing: it runs the NOW app and gives you Freely's live UK channels, so you get NOW plus free-to-air TV on one box. (Its sibling, the Manhattan Aero, doesn't include NOW — see our PLEIO vs Aero comparison if you're choosing between them.)
Because the router supplies the UK connection, every device on that network benefits — not just NOW. You can watch ITVX, BBC iPlayer, NOW and the rest at the same time, on TVs, phones, tablets and consoles, all appearing to be in the UK.
Not on its own — NOW is UK-licensed, so it geo-blocks you when you travel and detects VPNs. With a UK residential IP that looks like an ordinary home connection, your own NOW membership streams abroad just as it does at home.
Yes, with a valid NOW Sports Membership. NOW carries the Sky Sports channels, so a UK residential IP lets you watch the Premier League, F1, cricket and more abroad — no dish required.
NOW blocks the data-centre IPs that ordinary VPN apps use. A residential IP is a real UK home-broadband address, so NOW sees a normal household instead of a VPN.
Yes. The router only restores a UK connection — you still need your own valid NOW membership to watch. It's about using what you already pay for while you're away.
NOW is the simplest way to get Sky Sports and Sky Atlantic without a dish, and there’s no reason to lose it the moment you travel. With a UK residential IP, your own NOW membership streams abroad exactly as it does at home, on every device on the network. Set the router up before you go and you’ll be ready for kick-off wherever you land.
