July 10, 2017

July 18th sees the big relaunch for Sky Sports - but no price changes for VM customers

Sky Sports is getting a massive shake up later this month. Here's the news as reported by What Hi-Fi:
As expected, Sky has unveiled a major revamp of its sports channels. Under the changes - which kick in on 18th July - you'll be able to subscribe only to sport that you want to watch.
Sky will offer 10  channels, five of which will be cover specific sport. Sky Sports Premier League will only show action from the UK's top-flight league, for example, with all other football finding a home on Sky Sports Football. There are also dedicated channels for cricket, golf and F1.
You can subscribe to just one of these for £18 a month, two for £22 or three for £26. Want the full complement? It'll set you back the same £27.50 that current subscribers pay.
All the other sport that Sky covers (like rugby league, rugby union, tennis, netball, darts, NFL etc.) will be shown across two new channels: Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Arena. There's also a new channel called Sky Sports Main Event, which will showcase the biggest live sporting events.
Finally, Sky Sports News and taster channel Sky Sports Mix will be free to all Sky subscribers, even those who don't pay for Sky Sports.
But these likely savings WILL NOT apply to Virgin Media customers. According to James on Virgin's Community forum:
All the news about the Sky Sports Channel Changes are up here: Sky Sports Changes
Virgin Media will continue to offer all of the Sky Sports channels in one combined package, and when taken with our Full House pack we are the only provider where you can get all of the sport on BT Sport and Sky Sports in one package.

BUT I DON'T WANT ALL OF THE SPORT … and I'm sure I'm not alone. Not happy, Virgin Media, not happy at all. Please sort it out.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

It's about time the government put a stop to sky monopolising all the sport to assist us OAPs who can't afford all these outrageous charges.

impossiblyblack said...

This might help if you're out of contract: https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sky-sports-collection-sd-on-virgin-media-2200pm-12-months-264-total-saving-of-975pm-deal-through-livechat-2738089

I managed to get £9.75pm off of Sky Sports Collection through the livechat

Kevin Lloyd said...

That is indeed very disappointing. It's also pretty outrageous that the HD premium remains in place when it is now essentially an expectation rather than a privilege. My sabbatical from Sky Sports may last somewhat longer as a result.

Chris said...

I agree that charging extra for HD now is ridiculous. As far as paying for different numbers of channels. In the past, you never really knew which channel the thing you wanted to see would be on, so it wouldn't work very well to just have one or two. If they're going to be very strict about what content goes where then it might be workable. But I would be happy to spend the £27 (is that before HD?) or £32 we pay now if I got them all in 4K.

They should treat their paying customers like royalty because we're basically subsidising all the people out there who steal it or share their streaming app access on virgin anywhere or sky go with their family and friends.

MrJez said...

I only watch sky sports F1 and view via NowTv using a day/week pass. I was hoping Virgin media and/or NowTv would include the revised price packages but no. As a positive NowTv although only sd has a far superior picture quality to virgin media sd (60" tv)

Anonymous said...

What I find ridiculous about this new change is that every day 2 channels are showing the exact same thing.