Why the streams stop at the border, and what people do about it
Inside Japan, ABEMA streams every bout of every day of a tournament, live and free, with no account needed. It is the best sumo coverage there is. Outside Japan you cannot open it — and that single fact is behind most of the “how do I watch sumo” questions on the internet.
Every device on the internet has an address, and an address belongs to a country. Japanese broadcasters licence their programmes for Japan, so their players check that address and refuse anything from outside. It is not aimed at you personally; it is the shape of the licence.
A VPN routes your connection through a server somewhere else first. Connect through a server in Tokyo and the service you open sees a Tokyo address rather than yours. That is the whole idea, and it is also why VPNs are sold to people living abroad who want their home country’s television.
⚠️Two things to know before you spend money. ABEMA’s own help pages say that the service cannot be used through a proxy or a VPN — using one is against their terms, and that is your call to make, not ours. And we have not tested whether sumo appears on ABEMA over a Japanese VPN. We are not going to tell you it works when we have not seen it work. There is no live sumo to test against until the next tournament begins on 13 September 2026.
If you would rather not deal with any of this, the honest answer is that NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s daily highlights are free, legal everywhere, and — unlike ABEMA — in English. Most people abroad are better served by them.
The four steps are the same everywhere. What differs is the price, how long the refund window is, how many devices you can use at once, and — for readers of this page, the one that matters most — whether you can complete the purchase in English at all.
Every service below has a refund window. If you are only trying this for one tournament, note the length of that window before you pay: a fifteen-day tournament fits inside a 30-day guarantee.
Listed cheapest first among the ones you can buy in English. Prices are the discounted rates you get for committing to a long plan; they all renew at a higher rate, and they change often — check the current figure on the provider’s own site before you buy.
A Japanese provider with a full English site. It is the only one here that names Japanese streaming services — including ABEMA — in its own English marketing, and the only one that sells a 7, 15 or 30-day pass outright. A tournament is 15 days.
| Based in | Japan (Azpocket, Inc.) |
| Price | US$2.89/month on the two-year plan, renewing at US$7.30/month — or <b>US$7.49 once for 15 days</b>, with no subscription its own English site, 10 Aug 2026 |
| Refunds | 30-day money-back guarantee on the subscription plans |
| Devices at once | unlimited |
| Sign-up in English | yes |
Servers in Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama and Shibuya, and the most English-language support of the two. Subscription only — there is no short pass, so the tournament you came for costs you a year.
| Based in | British Virgin Islands (stated on its own no-logs page, 10 Aug 2026) |
| Price | from US$2.99/month on the two-year plan (billed US$83.72 for 28 months, then US$99.95 a year) official order page, 10 Aug 2026 — priced in US dollars |
| Refunds | 30-day money-back guarantee for new users |
| Devices at once | 10, 12 or 14 at once depending on the tier |
| Sign-up in English | yes |
🌟One of the two sells a 15-day pass for US$7.49 with no subscription attached. A tournament is exactly fifteen days, so that is the only way on this page to pay for one tournament and nothing else — cheaper than a year of anything, and there is nothing to remember to cancel.
Facts checked on 10 August 2026 against each provider’s own site. We are not able to test these services from outside Japan, so this is a comparison of what they publish, not a review of how they perform abroad.