Football is passion, glory, blood, sweat, and tears. It is more than just a sport, and anybody that tries to convince you from the contrary simply does not understand a thing about the joy that your team winning a championship against the bitter rivals can provide.
The planet is filled with incredibly passionate leagues, matches, derbies, and classics when we talk about football. Real Madrid – Barcelona is widely acclaimed as the biggest confrontation because of the prominence of the two clubs in Europe and the world, while River Plate – Boca Juniors is the America’s most important game. Inter – Milan, Ajax – PSV, and Juventus – Milan are also widely renowned.
The Old Firm: pure passion!
However, we can assure you that no game has the sporting, social, and religious implications than the Old Firm: Celtic vs. Rangers. It is the stand-off of two of the oldest, most successful sports clubs in the whole world, and they are both from the same city: Glasgow, Scotland.
For now, we will focus on Celtic. The Bhoys, the Celts, or the Hoops, as you may prefer to call them, are arguably the biggest Scottish club, although Rangers fans may fiercely dispute that sentence with strong arguments. That’s the magic of this derby: neither is the clear frontrunner!
Celtic FC has an online streaming service, which is Celtic TV. Fans from all over the world can enjoy the club’s matches, analysis, commentary, previews, and all types of content from the comfort of their laptops, desktop computers, or mobile streaming devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
However, since Sky Sports and BT Sports recently acquired broadcasting rights, the service is available via online streaming in all locations sans the UK and Ireland. That means that any connection request coming from within English, Welsh, or Irish territory will be denied for geoblocking reasons.
However, there is a way of watching Celtic TV from within the UK, and that is by using a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to acquire a non-British IP address and unblock the streaming signal from anywhere, even the United Kingdom.
Celtic FC: Scottish pride
Celtic Glasgow, or Celtic FC, is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in the Scotland area, along with Rangers. The Bhoys famously won the 1967 European Cup, the only Scottish side to do so in the history of the competition.
The club, based in Glasgow, plays its home games in the Celtic Park, which has a capacity of 60,411 seats. It plays in the top-flight division of Scottish football, which is the Scottish Premiership.
130 years of greatness
The club is 130 years old: it was founded in 1887 with a very specific end: solving impoverishment within the Irish immigrant community in the East End of Glasgow. The first game was played a year later, specifically on May 1888, and it was against Rangers. The final score was a Celtic victory, 5-2.
Since then, the two clubs have starred in The Old Firm, with joys and disappointment for each in different timeframes. Celtic’s most successful times were the sixties and the seventies: they won nine straight league titles under manager Jock Stein, as well as the 1967 European Cup.
In total, Celtic has lifted the Scottish league trophy 49 times, the most recent being this season. They have also won 38 Scottish Cups and 17 Scottish League Cups. Led by tactician Brendan Rodgers, the Bhoys earned 82 points, top in the league.
Celtic TV: the official streaming channel of the Bhoys
The Celtic FC had a TV channel, which ran from 2004 to 2009. From 2011 until now, it morphed into an online streaming channel. Back when it was a TV service, it was administrated and operated by Irish enterprise Setanta Sports.
For eager fans that continually look for updates, news on the injury front, previews of matches, live games, analysis, commentary, and other types of content about the club, tuning in the Celtic TV channels is a fantastic resource.
Sky Sports and BT Sports have streaming rights over the channel, so it is unavailable online in the UK and Ireland for licensing reasons. The ban within the British land is called geoblocking, but there are ways to overcome it.
You can hire a Smart DNS server or a proxy to access this channel from within the UK, sure. But the best method to do so is hiring the services of a VPN provider because, in addition to unblocking the signal, it will provide you with anonymity, security, and endless privacy.
VPN: a tool for anonymity, privacy, and accessibility
A VPN is the perfect tool to watch Celtic TV in the UK. The real, long name is Virtual Private Network, and it can be defined as an online resource that encrypts the user’s content generated online, as well as its IP address while lending him or her a temporary one to browse the web anonymously and unblock banned services that may be geoblocked.
VPNs create a virtual tunnel by implementing technologies or protocols (such as OpenVPN and IKEv2, just to name a couple,) that take your traffic and online identity (i.e. your IP address) and send them through remote servers.
The Celtic TV website is blocked in the UK because it is not intended to be watched there, simply put. However, the country happens to be the one that serves as the home of the most Celtic fans in the world, so there is some logic behind wanting to overcome geographical restrictions to enjoy the channel in the British area.
By borrowing a non-British IP address, users from within the UK will be able to enjoy the streaming signal of Celtic TV and to do that, a VPN is the most efficient method you could use. Using one of these, you could acquire, say, a French, Spanish, or German IP number, and the Celtic TV site won’t block your connection because it won’t be able to recognize it as one coming from the UK.
How to watch Celtic TV in the UK
- Choose a VPN provider with servers in countries different than the United Kingdom.
- Go to your chosen VPN provider’s website.
- Sign up for the VPN service. You may need to provide personal information, an email address, and a payment method. You will create a username and a password.
- Download and install the VPN client or app compatible with the device you will use for streaming Celtic TV.
- Once the installation process is complete, sign in using your username and password.
- Once logged in, find a server from a country different than the UK. Try, for example, the Netherlands. The nearer the country, the speedier your connection will be.
- Connect to the foreign server, earning an IP address from that country.
- After connecting to the foreign server, go to the Celtic TV website.
- Open the live streaming signal and watch Celtic TV from the UK with no hassle.
How to sign up for Celtic TV in the first place
- Find a friend or a relative living abroad, that is, in a country different than the UK.
- Tell him or her to sign up for the Celtic TV service in your behalf, then use the VPN app in your device to enjoy the games.
- If having a person outside the UK signing up with the Celtic TV service on your behalf isn’t an option, use FakeAddressGenerator to gain a different country’s IP number.
Best VPN to watch Celtic TV in the UK
TorGuard
More than 3,000 servers in 55 nations and one of the strongest reputations in the market are more than enough for you to consider TorGuard as your top choice when looking for VPN app to watch Celtic TV in the UK. You can connect to numerous countries, as well as enjoy OpenVPN support, five different devices connected at the same time, unlimited bandwidth and top-notch speeds, all for $10 per month. It has one of the best live chat features in the business, too.
IPVanish
With a broad network of 950 servers, 60 nations, and more than 40,000 IP addresses, IPVanish provides all the tools to watch Celtic TV from within the UK territory. However, the brand’s most desirable feature is its fast speeds: IPVanish can compete with any company in that regard, and it is perfect for online streaming. It also has exciting security offerings, such as a kill switch and DNS leak protection to safeguard your anonymity.
In conclusion, Celtic FC is arguably the most prominent Scottish club, and its fame trespasses the British borders. However, the majority of its fans is located in the UK, so it comes off as a little unfair that Celtic TV, the online streaming channel of the club, is blocked there.
However, users and fans don’t need to worry, as there are tools for unblocking Celtic TV and bypassing geoblocking restrictions inside the UK territory. VPNs are the most useful ones, as you can borrow a foreign IP number to successfully open the streaming signal even if you are in Great Britain. Being a Celtic fan was never so easy!
