British soccer fans will be able to watch World Cup matches free on the internet broadcast from BBC website, which is expected to distract office workers around the United Kingdom. According to BBC website, all of the 2006 World Cup matches will be available via live stream. The live video streaming of World Cup will be available only to UK broadband users due to sports right arrangements, where the broadcaster is limited to operate in a single country. In addition, four-minute highlight packages will be available from every game on demand. They will be streaming live on the internet 23 of the first-round matches, as well as the knockout stages. Audience will be able to listen to the same commentary and stream identical coverage as on conventional terrestrial television. The BBC declined to disclose how much did the broadband rights cost them. The deal was done with Infront Sports and Media, organization overseeing sales of the World Cup broadcast rights worldwide.

The BBC has broadcast soccer over the internet in the past, but this will be definitely biggest-ever event to date. In 2005 they streamed the Club World Championship final between Liverpool and Sao Paulo online to UK internet users. They have already also secured broadband broadcast rights for World Cups in 2010 and 2014. You can also check out BBC’s Editor’s Blog for more information.

Watching World Cup streams live over the Internet in North America

It will be interesting to see how BBC will try to limit the streams to only UK users. They might geo-target the audience by checking your IP address and looking up the country associated with it. You might be able to get around this by connecting via a UK-based proxy server. You can search Google for keywords like “anonymous proxy list”, “UK proxy list” etc. and find websites which list proxy servers in different countries. When you find one located in the UK, all you need to do is to modify your browser settings and set you connection to run through such proxy. Note that these public proxy lists might not be accurate and you might need to test several proxies to find one which is actually working and has reasonable speed. Once you find a good proxy, you should be able to connect to BBC website and see the live streams.

More resources:
BBC website shows World Cup games
World Cup by broadband endangers networks
World Cup streaming to cause network meltdown