roberino

I will be in Shenyang next Saturday. Can anyone point me to the best bar in which to watch the England and Japan RWC matches? Anyone care to join me?

JPDM

Probably your hotel room mini-bar on your computer.

moondog

There are some okay bars in Shenyang. I'm loath to provide specific recs because I haven't been there in about five years, but I know it has continued to develop since.

JPDM

I am sure that there must be some bars there, but showing this game?

moondog

I'm not sure about this, but I certainly have seen rugby (and similar) on TV in bars/pubs in many cities. Anyway, it's probably worth a bit of exploration on the OP's part because watching sports on a laptop isn't exactly a thrilling experience. I did a bit of googling after my last post just out of curiosity. As I suspected, none of the places I knew of 5 years ago still exist, at least under their names at the time. I would have recommended the Traders hotel because the pub there had excellent food, but apparently (and unsurprisingly) it didn't survive during the Hotel Jen rebrand (most, if not all, Traders have been converted to the Jen concept, which is to my liking on the whole, but white guys who like sports are definitely not a target demographic).

SJOGuy

Does the concept of a sports bar even exist in China, let alone one that has rugby on a giant-screen TV, let alone one that shows a match between two foreign teams?

moondog

Most definitely, yes

SJOGuy

Thanks, moondog.

JPDM

Yes there are but even then I would find a game from two days ago. The beat chances would be in big and more international cities like Beijing where a bar is owned by an expat and shows games from his home country. Again, rarely live.
I am always amazed that people travel across the world and expect to be able to watch a game of their favorite team on foreign tv.

moondog

IME, live broadcasts are the norm for even mildly important sporting events in time zones ranging from GMT to GMT plus ~12 (basically everywhere except the Americas), and bars do open at odd hours for events that their clientele deems especially important (e.g. Super Bowl and some NBA games).

I'm hard pressed to think of any tier 2 or tier 3 cities that don't have bars with (usually bootlegged) satellite TV, and I'd place especially high odds on Shenyang, largely due to BMW (largest automobile production facility in the world), though I'm sure there is substantial other foreign business there as well.

roberino

Any ideas as to where I can stream it from?

moondog

I suppose you could inquire with the league about official broadcasting/streaming rights in China and/or HK, bearing in mind that the latter would likely require a good VPN* or similar. Short of this, you could presumably find some type of feed by simply doing a google searcharound game time, but this is all but guaranteed to suck (i.e. nearly unwatchable). I suggest you ask your hotel concierge for bar suggestions, and try your luck from there (don't call ahead -- confusing conversation for both you and the other party; just go and see for yourself).

*Assuming my Netflix experiences are a useful point of reference, it's not just about the overall quality of the VPN company, but only specific servers work. In the case of Exp, only about 5 (out of ~500) servers are good for Netflix at any given point in time, the specifics change frequently, and they strongly discourage sharing details in online forums.

roberino

In case anyone cares, The Black Sheep bar in Shenyang shows the UK feed.