The 2025 NBA Draft will held over two consecutive nights. The first round is set to take place on Wednesday, June 25, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The Dallas Mavericks will get proceedings underway with the first of the 59 picks. Depending on your location during the 2025 NBA Draft, you may need a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to watch live online without restriction.
We only recommend official sources for watching the 2025 NBA Draft. As a hugely popular sporting event, there will surely be many unlicensed streams. However, we find the low resolution of these streams, as well as their tendency to be pulled offline for copyright violation, not worth the risk. There’s no need for unauthorized streams with many official ways to stream the 2025 NBA Draft live online in the best possible quality.
If you’re going overseas on vacation, use a VPN to continue watching the 2025 NBA Draft on your home streaming service.
How to watch the 2025 NBA Draft from anywhere with a VPN
A VPN is a service with servers in a variety of locations. By connecting to one of these servers, you’re assigned a different IP address that matches that server’s country. Your internet traffic is encrypted, and it’ll look like you’re browsing from elsewhere. VPNs are popular with streamers looking to bypass the geo-blocking of popular streaming platforms.
Here’s how to stream the 2025 NBA Draft using a VPN:
- First, sign up with a VPN. We recommend NordVPN for unblocking and watching the 2025 NBA Draft. Surfshark and IPVanish are solid alternatives.
- Next, you’ll be able to download the VPN app that’s compatible with your streaming device. Follow the instructions on the screen to install the app on your device.
- Log in to the VPN app before connecting to a server in the same country as the streaming service you’re attempting to watch the NBA Draft.
- Now you can access the streaming platform showing the NBA Draft. Thanks to your new VPN IP address, the content should now be unblocked and playing normally.
- Still blocked? You should clear your browser’s cache and cookies. You might need to try more than one server to find an IP address that hasn’t yet been blacklisted.
The NBA Draft will air live, so test your VPN with your chosen streaming service in advance. This helps you avoid any last-minute technical issues. It also gives you enough time to troubleshoot problems with your VPN’s support.
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How to watch the 2025 NBA Draft live online for free on US TV
Both nights of the 2025 NBA Draft will air on ESPN while ABC will broadcast the first round only. Coverage starts at 8 PM ET (5 PM PT). If you’ve got a cable TV subscription that includes ESPN and/or ABC, you can sign in to their respective websites. You’ll be asked to provide your cable TV login credentials and can then stream the NBA Draft live at no extra cost.
You can also watch ABC and ESPN without cable via the following TV streaming services:
- FuboTV: Includes ESPN and ABC. USD $84.99/month but $20 off your first month and includes a 7-day free trial. and includes ESPN and ABC.
- Hulu with Live TV: Includes ESPN and ABC. $82.99/month after a 3-day free trial.
- Sling TV: Includes ESPN and ABC albeit in two different plans. Either plan costs $45.99/month but $23 for your first month. Alternatively, you can get both for $60.99 a month ($30.50 for the first month).
- YouTube TV: Includes ESPN and ABC and costs $82.99/month but $59.99/month for your first two months. Currently offers a 10-day free trial.
With the exception of Sling TV, the above options offer free trials, which means you can watch the NBA Draft for free, provided you remember to cancel in time. Of the TV streaming services, Sling TV is the most affordable and is currently running an offer where you’ll only pay $23 for your first month.
In order to watch ESPN and ABC or any of the above TV streaming services from outside the US, you’ll need a VPN. This allows you to connect to a VPN server in the country to get a US IP address and bypass content restrictions. NordVPN works with the above options and even comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it out risk-free.
Where else can I watch the 2025 NBA Draft online?
Canada
To watch the 2025 NBA Draft in Canada, you’ll need TSN. You may already have access to TSN as part of your cable TV subscription. If that’s the case, you only need to sign in to watch live online. Otherwise, it’s possible to subscribe to TSN for the monthly price of CAD $19.99. Just remember that TSN is only offered in Canada. Watching from abroad requires a Canadian IP address via a VPN service.
UK
TNT Sports has a multi-year broadcast deal with the NBA, so you’ll be able to watch the NBA Draft live online in the UK. This makes it easy for existing TNT Sports customers who don’t need to pay extra to stream the event. However, you don’t need to commit to a contract with Sky or BT to watch TNT Sports. That’s because it’s also possible to watch TNT Sports via Discovery+ for the price of GBP £30.99/month.
To continue watching TNT Sports abroad, be it via Sky Go or Discovery+, you’ll need a VPN. Connect to a server in the UK to get a UK IP address and unblock location-restricted streams.
Australia
You can watch the 2025 NBA Draft on Kayo Sports in Australia. A subscription costs AUD $30 a month though you’ll only be able to watch on one screen at a time. To stream on two screens, the price is $40 a month. If you travel outside Australia, you’ll find that Kayo Sports becomes geo-blocked. A VPN and Australian IP address can help you sidestep this and continue streaming content as normal.
Can I watch the 2025 NBA Draft abroad with a free VPN?
It’s unlikely that a free VPN will successfully unblock the above streaming options. Free VPNs are poor unblockers of content due to the lack of servers and IP addresses offered. Besides, the average free VPN is far too slow for streaming, particularly live and high-resolution. If you don’t want your stream of the NBA draft to be hampered by excessive lag and buffering (often due to bandwidth throttling), you’re better off avoiding free VPNs.
A free VPN may compromise your security and online privacy by failing to encrypt your data properly or even logging and selling this information. We recommend quality paid VPNs that use the highest level of encryption, protect you from data leaks, and operate no-logs policies. This allows you to not only stream sports (including the NBA Draft) from anywhere, but to do so securely and privately.
NBA Draft 2025: FAQs
What should I know about the 2025 NBA Draft?
The 2025 NBA Draft will take place over two nights and sees 30 teams making a total of 59 picks. This is instead of the usual 60 picks due to the New York Knicks losing a second round pick from a 2022 free agency violation.
The Dallas Mavericks hold the first pick in this year’s draft after being surprise winners in the NBA draft lottery where they had only a 1.8 percent chance of winning the top pick. The Utah Jazz, the team with the worst record in the NBA, fell all the way to the fifth pick.
Cooper Flagg is expected to be the first pick of the draft. The small forward was consensus national player of the year and joins a franchise that has playoff aspirations for the 2025-26 NBA season.
Is it legal to stream the NBA Draft with a VPN?
You can legally stream the NBA Draft with a VPN. Just make sure that VPNs are legal in your country before using one. Fortunately, VPNs are legal in most countries.
Note that using a VPN to bypass a streaming platform’s content restrictions may go against its terms of use. Still, it’s highly uncommon for action to be taken against users, particularly because VPN use is so common. At worst, your VPN IP address may be blacklisted, but you can always switch servers to change your IP address.
Note: We are not lawyers and nothing in this article should be taken as legal advice.
