Watch Live Ligue 1 in France for FREE: Online, TV Channels and Stream

Rosemary August 08, 2021 | 10:32

The 2021/22 Ligue1 is France's top tier professional football league, and one of the biggest events of this year. Check out how to watch Ligue 1 in France.

Watch Live Ligue 1 in France for Free: Online, TV Channels, Stream. Photo Tech Radar

Ligue 1 season began on August 6, with a match between Monaco vs. Nantes at 8 PM BST (12 PM PST/ 3 PM EST). It’ll run until May 21, 2022, and during this time, each team will play 38 matches. You don’t need a season ticket to catch all of the action, though; read on below to find out how you can live stream Ligue 1 games from the comfort of your own home.

It’s important to note that we’ll only be recommending official sources to live stream Ligue 1. Although unlicensed streams are rife online, you should know that these are often low-quality, unreliable, and prone to being taken offline during matches. With so many legitimate ways to watch, there’s nothing to be gained by using unofficial Ligue 1 streams.

How to watch Ligue 1 online with a VPN in France?

Choose a VPN designed for HD streaming. We recommend NordVPN but Surfshark and ExpressVPN are two high-performance alternatives.

Download and install the VPN software. There will be a few different versions, so be sure to get the right one for your operating system.

Decide which of the sources below you’d like to use, then sign up. Note that you might need a payment method linked to an address in the required country.

Connect to one of your VPN’s servers in the appropriate location. For instance, you’d use a British server for BT Sport, or a French one for Canal+.

Try to watch a video on your chosen site. If you’re still getting errors, you might have to reload the page first. Afterward, content should play as normal.

If you want to watch Ligue 1 games while you’re abroad, you can use a VPN to spoof your location and get a French IP address.

Which VPN service you choose depends on your goals. We have some good suggestions that will make things simple. If your goal is to only make sure you can watch all the content in the US or other libraries, you’ll want to take a look at ExpressVPN. They offer a Smart DNS service that will help you unblock any geo-restrictions that would prevent you from seeing the channel outside of France without the overhead of encryption. If you are more security minded, you’ll also want to check out ExpressVPN. They have a kill switch feature, and they do not keep any activity logs.

Can I watch Ligue 1 soccer with a free VPN?

Free VPNs can seem tempting at first glance, but we advise against using them for several reasons. First and foremost, they don’t provide the same quality of connection. With limited server networks and a never-ending influx of users, you’ll find that free VPNs struggle to load live HD video smoothly. With data caps and queues, this process only becomes more frustrating for the user.

Free VPNs pose a threat to your hardware and personal information. In 2016, one study showed that dozens of free VPN apps for Android actually attempted to install malware onto their users’ devices. Even if you use a well-established free VPN, there are no guarantees; we’ve seen high-profile free VPNs sell their users’ bandwidth for use in a botnet before. To protect yourself and your personal information, we recommend using a trusted VPN with a privacy policy that puts its users first.

How to watch Ligue 1 online on TV in France?

In France, the majority of Ligue 1 fixtures will be split between Canal Sports and beIN Sports. Canal Sports costs €19.90 per month, with a one-month free trial, and beIN Sports starts at €14 per month, although we’d recommend choosing the €15 plan instead to avoid being locked into a 12-month contract.

Canal+ Sport is a premium French TV channel. Much like ESPN in the US, the channel provides great sports like football (soccer for Americans), F1 racing, golf, basketball, and more. The channel itself is quite popular because it offers high resolution sports and has great coverage. If you are in France, you can watch it with a cable or satellite subscription. If you are traveling abroad, you would need to connect to a VPN.

Canal+ started broadcasting in 1984 and is 100% owned by the Canal+ Group. Though some of the programming is free to air, most of it is encrypted. Since those days, the group has become a major broadcaster in Europe. It runs several different channels including a sports channel, movie channel, and more.

Canal+ Sport started broadcasting in 2005 as a digital terrestrial TV network. It did not start broadcasting in high definition until 2008. Analogue terrestrial signals were turned off in 2010. Notable sports on the channel include the FIA Formula One World Championship and English Premier League. That is the most watched football league in the world.

In France, the majority of Ligue 1 fixtures (eight per week) will be shown on Amazon Prime Video. Technically, Canal also holds the rights to two per week, but won’t be showing any this season as it feels the Ligue gave Amazon favorable terms.

There is a slight catch, in that you’ll have to pay an extra €12.99 per month on top of the price of a Prime subscription. In other words, the total cost is €18.98 per month. Still, with around 80% of the competition being shown, this isn’t too bad.