Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking Thankfully, that changed with the arrival of Kayo Sports in 2018. Fast-forward a few years and I’ve spent hundreds of hours streaming live sports and replays via Kayo. Binge is now the replacement for those looking to cut the cord for Foxtel’s mainstream TV and movie content, while Kayo remains as the cord-free sports streaming equivalent. In comparison, Stan Sport costs $25 for SD steams on one screen, $31 for three HD streams and $36 for four 4K streams. Admittedly, Kayo has dozens of sports options while Stan has seven. Competing services like Optus Sport ($24.99 per month or $199 per year) and Paramount Plus ($8.99 per month or $89.99 per year) only offer different codes of the same sport: soccer. All of these channels can be watched live, but Kayo takes it one step further over Foxtel by allowing you to rewatch old games that you might have missed, as well as sporting documentaries such as ESPN’s 30 for 30. Here’s a selection of the 43+ sports you can watch on Kayo Sports that have multiple code options to choose from: Similarly, there is some padding going on in that list. For instance, ‘men’s internationals’ is one of the categories for rugby union, but that’s a repository of old match replays before Stan nabbed the rights. There are also occasional errors, like how the sailing category had a bunch of darts content listed in it.
Android smartphones and tablets (Android 6 and above) iOS smartphones and tablets (iOS 13 and above) Android TV (version 7.0 and above) Computers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge browsers) Apple TV (4th gen or higher) Selected Android TVs Samsung TVs (2017 and later models) Selected Hisense TVs (2019–2021 models) LG TVs (2018 and later models) Telstra TV Chromecast (Ultra models and later are best) PlayStation 4 and 5
Chrome (MacOS 10.12+ or Windows 10+) Safari (MacOS 10.12+) Firefox (MacOS 10.12+ or Windows 10+) Edge (Windows 10)
While PlayStation 4 and 5 owners can download the Kayo Sports app, it’s still listed as part of the development roadmap for Xbox users. Note that the Xbox version was flagged as part of the roadmap two years ago when I initially wrote this review. If, for instance, a stream ends for one sport–and, frustratingly, Kayo doesn’t automatically switch channels or offer intuitive ‘watch next options’–you need to manually refresh either the homepage by restarting the app or a sports category by shifting between them to see the new content. This is still the case on Android TV two years after complaining about this app shortcoming. You’ll also quickly clue on to the reality that Kayo is a stream of whichever Foxtel channel is showing a specific sport at a particular time, which starts and stops once the Kayo controllers determine it should start and stop. It’s a quirk you become accustomed to for switching between sports streams. On one hand, this is technically a perk for those who have memories of being frustratingly forced to switch channels to continue watching a match that’s been shifted off a priority Foxtel channel. On the other, it feels jarring for a stream to suddenly end without being automatically switched to another one or prompted with what to watch next. It doesn’t help that free-to-air commentary is more insightful and of a better quality than what’s sometimes on offer on Kayo. Free-to-air cricket also gets better between-innings commentary for the Big Bash League, whereas Kayo is stuck with a slew of back-to-back, oft-repeated ads instead of analysis. The value detracts further when you see mic-wearing players clearly speaking to the free-to-air stream, while shoddy camera work is a regular occurrence that tarnishes the live experience and ruins replays. To add insult to injury, there were a couple of occasions where streams didn’t start on time or were incorrectly linked, which meant part of the pre-match analysis was missed. Two years later, there’s still a tendency for live streams to start bang on time; your other option is to stay at the mercy of the curated live channels. Quirks aside, Kayo is a marked improvement compared to my struggles with Foxtel Now and Foxtel Go in the past. One thing worth noting is that Kayo is very good at sniffing out a virtual private network (VPN) connection. This means it’s trickier for Aussie international travellers and expats to access Kayo while abroad. I did have success with Windscribe VPN, PureVPN and ExpressVPN in my Kayo streaming tests. Remember if you’re multi-streaming you’ll need to multiply those numbers per the amount of streams you have going at once. The more you stream, the more data you’ll use. There’s a 1.5Mbps minimum bandwidth requirement for streaming but a 2.5Mbps minimum bandwidth requirement for seamless streaming. Kayo advises at least a 4Mbps for 720p and 7.5Mbps for 1080p. SplitView is available on Android, iOS, web browser, Android TV and Apple TV devices. Here’s a handy table from the Kayo website to help track how much data you’ll use per stream, per hour, depending on the quality of the stream (with our additions and data-usage estimates for lower-bandwidth streaming). It used to be that you had to visit a special link to cancel Kayo. Nowadays, it’s a lot more straightforward. Follow these steps to cancel your Kayo Sports subscription: Still, given the quality-of-life detractors outlined above, some of the sports categories that feel more like padding and changes in pricing, paying for Kayo isn’t so much the best choice as it is the only one available for streaming sports. The next step is to check out features like how many simultaneous streams are available and the quality of those streams. We much prefer 1080p streaming as a minimum, but bonus points if 4K streaming is available. We then spend time streaming the sports, taking note of any features like multi-view videos or user-interface detractors that get in the way of sports.
