Zaraki KenpachiCrackStreams Review: A Free Sports Streaming Service .When it comes to live-streaming sports for free on the internet, you can find a handful of options to choose from.
One of the more popular ones that you’ll come across is CrackStreams — a free sports live streaming website.
But just like any website offering free live streams of usually-paid-for events, there’s going to be some trade-offs you’ll have to make. It’s up to you to decide if those trade-offs are worth it.
In this CrackStreams review, we’re going to go over all aspects of CrackStreams (good and ugly) and tell you how to stay safe while using it.
Available streams on CrackStreams
CrackStreams is a website that compiles and organizes live streams of the biggest and latest sporting events.
Although they lack some sports like hockey or soccer, you can find games for big-league teams and matches for combat sports.
Here’s what CrackStreams offers:
- American Football (Both NFL and XFL)
- Basketball
- WWE
- Boxing
- MMA/UFC
The sports available are dependent on what is currently in-season and playing (remember, it is a live-streaming website).
At the bottom and top of the page, you’ll find quick links to each category of streams.
To access the content, all you need to do is click on one of the big buttons or quick links found at the bottom of the page and select what you’d like to watch.
For combat sports, it appears you’ll have to watch whatever fight they decide to stream, but you can access schedules for seasonal sports such as basketball.
The links to the streams for each match or game don’t become available until one day before the event starts.
Stream and site quality
The site itself leaves much to be desired. In all fairness, the site is straightforward and easy to use. However, if you’re coming for the highest-quality experience, then maybe find a different website (or you can pay for the real thing).
If you’re coming to watch free sports streams, then chances are you’re prepared to sacrifice some quality and user-experience to watch your games.
All stream links are kept up-to-date, so the site tries hard to make sure its viewers have the best streams they can.
As far as stream quality goes, you can expect it to be as inconsistent as other free live-streaming sites. Sometimes everything will be perfect, and other times, the stream will freeze when you need it most.
Based on some reviews from ratrating, it appears the stream quality is somewhat hit or miss. Some users complain of laggy streams and buffering while others are singing its praises.
After joining a stream myself, I noticed it’s not quite HD quality, but it’s not bad by any means. It is free after all, so maybe this 50/50 quality experience is to be expected.
Just like with other free streaming sites such as Buffstreamz, you’re certain to be spammed with popup ads once you click on a stream link. Keep in mind: these ads are what keeps the site profitable and running.
Is CrackStreams safe?
Let’s face the music here:
CrackStreams is a “free” sports streaming service where they stream content you’d otherwise have to pay to watch.
The site itself also isn’t secured with an SSL like most websites are (like ours). The good news is you don’t need to enter any of your information to watch the free streams.
Whether or not you can get in trouble for watching is uncertain. Streaming pirated content is illegal, but there is some definite legal grey area when it comes to watching the content. Hosting the streams, however, is considered piracy and illegal.
Piracy is a big issue for sporting organizations, and they fight hard to stop it. This means that not every stream on the site may be functioning come the time of the event. The organizations may have managed to shut it down before you could watch it.
To ensure extra safety while streaming, I recommend using a VPN while watching, such as NordVPN. Also, always click out of the popup ads to make sure you don’t have any unwanted downloads.
Extra features
CrackStreams isn’t all streams, though. The site does work to establish some sort of community.
CrackStreams offers a way to communicate with your fellow sports viewers with a chatroom on the left side of the stream. This is where we’d show it to you if it weren’t filled with obscenities that would make your grandma faint.
And yes, we checked all the chats on each stream category. They are all like that. It’s unfortunate, but that’s what you get when you give strangers on the internet anonymity.
Aside from the lovely aspects of chatting with folks on the internet, they also have a Discord server. Discord is a custom voice/chat room server, creating a service that allows people to form entire community servers based around a single topic.
Discord is very useful for building a community, especially with younger people. So it’s nice to see CrackStreams making use of it. The server itself is simple and offers a couple of voice channels and periodic announcements of new streams to watch. If you’re looking to stay to date on what’s streaming, give the Discord server a try.
After setting up your Discord, all you have to do is click the link to the server on the site.
It looks like this:
The CrackStreams Discord chat is a good way to stay up-to-date with the latest streams and sporting events.
Final Thoughts
CrackStreams is a somewhat sketchy website, but considering you get to watch your favorite sports for free, it may be worth it for you. The site also works to build a community and provide those viewers with quality sports streams.
The site is simple, and it does provide the content that it advertises. So it’s tough to complain about too much if you’re looking for questionably legal streams.
Just remember to be aware of the risks of using sites like this if you’re going to use them at all.
Hugh Hay
