The brilliant u/aybesea has been regularly updating his US Sports Perfection over the last few months, but I thought I'd have a go at replicating that for the EU. What's important to me is having multiple sources (or different channel options) for the non-US sports, so we're talking Soccer, Tennis, Golf, Cricket, Rugby, Motorsport, Darts, Snooker, Boxing. These need to be at the very least in HD and also easy to find (so that means well-named categories and great EPG). I now have a family to worry about, so catch-up on some of the main channels is important during the big events!

I have no interest in VOD and it's a real concern to me that lots of providers are sinking their time into providing VOD when that time could be spent improving their main service. That being said, a sports VOD is always welcomed.

Like u/aybesea, this isn't about finding the cheapest set-up, but instead is about finding a combination that allows me to sit down whenever I'm free and not have to worry about whether or not I'll be able to watch what I want.

I'd like this thread to become an ongoing discussion where you can share suggestions on how I can achieve EU Sports Perfection.

--- MY CURRENT SET-UP ---

Nvidia Shield

TiviMate Pro (I had previously used PerfectPlayer but TiviMate has really come on and is now my favorite app)

500mb Broadband that hasn't been subject to any blocks (yet!)

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--- MY CURRENT MAIN PROVIDER MIX ---

Helix

This has been my longest running provider. I'm going through a reseller which seems to offer all channels for slightly cheaper than the main site. They mostly stayed up during "The Troubles" and have multiple sources for most sports channels. While I can't scientifically confirm this, they also seemed to be the provider that had the 50fps BT Sports streams available most often. Some criticisms of them is that their channel offering is so large that the channel list and EPG takes a while to update when opened and also the existence of "VIP" categories is a bit confusing. Are these better, more reliable streams? Very often they're the exact same source as the other categories!

Jarvis

I realise this is a Prime reseller, but I want to specifically call-out Jarvis because the support has been the best I've come across in the IPTV world. I originally brought Jarvis in as a back-up service but it has probably got the most use since things have stablised in the last few weeks. Their PPV/Events section is the biggest I've seen. I can sit down at any hour of the day and there's usually something live on! It may be sprint car racing on some dirt track, live streamed from an iPhone, but seriously, inject that shit into my veins! Their EPG works for all the ESPN+ channels, which is a massive timesaver as the ESPN+ 60fps streams look far better than the UK 25fps streams. My biggest criticism of the service is that the Sports channels are just lumped into the one category and the EPL is bundled into a much bigger group containing rugby and all other football passes, making it more difficult to find what you want.

--- THE BACKUPS ---

DarkMEDIA

Currently evaluating DarkMEDIA and don't have many complaints. They are UK/EU focused, so all the main channels are there and the EPG is structured in a way that makes sense. The streams are stable but it does seem to be lacking in the ultra-high quallity steams department, with a lot of the steams being 720p at 25fps, when I know there are 1080p @ 50fps streams available. Without knowing how this works behind the scenes, I can only assume that there's an added cost in providing these 50fps streams or they may not be as stable, so they aren't provided. They recently just announced they're not doing 6 or 12 month discounted subs any more. I can understand why, given the volatility of the IPTV industry now but when you're using mulitple subs, it's nice to know you're getting the best price.

STV

Honestly not sure if this is actual name of the service, or whether that's a reseller, but I recently just signed up to this. Channel list is structured similar to DarkMEDIA but there's not just a focus on sports so there's a lot more on offer. The Sky Sports channels are in a separate category, which I find to be a bit odd, but it's been stable so far. One nice thing is that they have a Sports Schedule channel that cycles through upcoming events and the channels they're on. A long way away from a match centre, but does at least save you having to either look up a website/app, or a Telegram channel to see what channel something is on.

--- THE PAST ---

Vaders/CoolasIce - I had subs to these at separate times but they were my happiest IPTV times when combined with Helix. I would just have their MatchCenter/Sports Centre categories visible as my main playlist and then have Helix as the second playlist in TiviMate. Everything I wanted to find could be easily done through the match centres, and if sources there were offline, I would go to Helix and find it. RIP!

Beast - Too US focused and had lots of buffering issues. You had to watch their Telegram group like a hawk to know what was going on.

Beams - Had two separate trials with these but both times I was getting horrendous buffering

SmoothStreams - The provider I really wanted to work! Best EPG in the business and everything covered. I was using this with SmoothProxy but was always running into buffering issues, regardless of what service I was connecting to. Account lost with them now but if anyone has an invite, I'd love to start up with them again.

--- PRICING ---

The current set-up is costing around €29 a month. I go for 6 month subs where available where there's discounts. Means I don't have to pay invoices every month and because I'm not relying on a single provider, if one disappears with my money, I may be out of pocket, but at least I still have some other provider running.

--- NOTES ---

Most providers now provide some kind of channel updates in their Telegram/Discord with a breakdown of the sport that's live over the weekend. This is at least something, but I just use http://sport-tv-guide.live to quickly find multiple channels.

The Holy Grail provider will provide a Match Centre i.e. a seperate category of regularly updating streams of what's live right now. Vaders did this best, with multiple streams per event and CoolasIce followed this quite well but only had one stream per event and that was often down!

One of my biggest struggles right now is that even after hiding the groups I don't need, it still looks messy with 4 playlists loaded. I have a sub to Xeev, but consolidating and merging here is giving me mixed results. Especially because Xeev only refreshes once a day! Does anyone else consolidate multiple subs into an easy to understand way?

As a rule of thumb, I don't do 24/48 hr trials. I take out a 1 month sub, integrate it into my system and then see how it performs as part of it, without necessarily going out of my way to use it. This means that things like EPG accuracy and well structured categories suddenly become far more important.

-- THE FUTURE --

If you know of any services that could help with coverage and a great EPG, let me know and I'll add it to my list.