The soccer fever of the UEFA EURO 2024 and Copa America CONMEBOL tournaments rages through Europe and the Americas. Fox Sports, the sports programming division of the Fox Corporation, has most of the rights to stream Euros and Copa America in the USA. Still, Fox is unavailable on standard streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, making the events inaccessible for many.

With only a handful of streamers, millions of people scramble for options when they want to watch a soccer match. Apart from live broadcasters, such as Fox, a few other options provide viewing access to the matches, such as Sling, Fubo, and even YouTube TV, but all of those come at a price.

Understandably, while striving to avoid the steep fees set by streamers, viewers have been looking for ways to watch the matches for free or a fraction of the cost.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, as cybercriminals often set traps for all the people who try to bend the rules and avoid the steep prices. Not paying usually results in thousands of people watching sports content on questionable websites. Such places often require a small payment or are infected with malicious code that aims to get into the viewer’s system and possibly even steal credit card details.

Read also: 14 Types of Malware and How to Prevent Them

So, how do you stay safe and watch the games? There are a few ways.

Ways to stay safe and watch the games

  • Attend in person

Check if there are tournament matches nearby. There is no better way to enjoy the game’s beauty than watching it in person. If this is an option, head to Ticketmaster, book tickets, and stop reading. 

  • Sports bar

If attending in person is not an option, soccer fanatics will likely not have a better excuse to head to the pub. All sports bars cover major events such as the Euros and Copa America, and watching them at a bar means that folks can enjoy a cold beverage instead of browsing websites or filling out online forms to start a trial.

  • Free trial

Most streamers offer free trials. FuboTV has the longest free trial—it is one week and provides access to many games completely free of charge and free of viruses. FuboTV sometimes offers matches even in Spanish.

  • VPN

Soccer clashes are often available for free on national TV in other countries. Viewers can use a VPN to hop over the virtual wall and access a game. If a user gets a reliable VPN and has access to high-speed internet, watching in real-time could work well. 

  • Free streaming

Getting free access to live soccer games on murky mirror websites could be tempting and sometimes could work, but we suggest folks avoid being on those. If this is the last resort, users should ensure they don’t share card details and have antivirus installed on all smart devices. 

In the USA, soccer has been trying to dethrone baseball and ice hockey for years and may eventually succeed. It could potentially become the third most popular team sport in the US, especially with the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup planned to take place right here in North America. Whatever sport you watch, ensuring you do it on a protected device is a must, as sometimes even big corporations get hit by cyber-attacks and unintentionally expose customer info.Â