diff --git a/youtube_dl/utils.py b/youtube_dl/utils.py
index cfb2d1bf5..6ab1747b3 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/utils.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/utils.py
@@ -861,6 +861,8 @@ class YoutubeDLHandler(compat_urllib_request.HTTPHandler):
                 # As of RFC 2616 default charset is iso-8859-1 that is respected by python 3
                 if sys.version_info >= (3, 0):
                     location = location.encode('iso-8859-1').decode('utf-8')
+                else:
+                    location = location.decode('utf-8')
                 location_escaped = escape_url(location)
                 if location != location_escaped:
                     del resp.headers['Location']