If you’re a football fan, you’ll know how expensive it can be to watch ‘The beautiful game’ in the comfort of your armchair. This is why we have put together a quick comparison guide so that you can see the difference in prices and packages available to you.
Sky (For the Football Fanatic)
So to kick-off this blog post, we’ll start with Sky. As mentioned above, Sky has dominated the arena in terms of sports broadcasting for many years, and their line-up is just as impressive as ever. They have a huge 116 Premier League games being broadcast throughout this season, offering the most games out of any of the broadcasters mentioned above. If you subscribe to Sky Sports you will receive 6 sports channels including Sky Sports News and their most recent channel Sky F1 alongside Sky Sports 1-4.
There are many packages available, but the cheapest option would be to join Sky TV and then add the Sky Sports package as an addition. This comes to £43.50 (package) + £14.50 (line rental) for the first year costing a total of £58 a month (£696 for the year) although these prices will increase after the first year to £65.50 (including line rental). The bonus is it comes with FREE unlimited broadband for 12 months.
It also comes with a £25 M&S voucher and if you buy via TopCashback you can get an amazing £136.50 cashback by selecting ‘The Sports Bundle’.*
So for a year of Sky + Sports it will cost you £696 – £136.50 cashback = 559.50 - £25 M&S Voucher = £534.50
Now TV (For the occasional game)
Now TV is Sky’s new streaming on demand service. You can either buy a box for £10, or watch it on devices such as the Xbox, PlayStation and Smart TVs. The advantage to this is the fact that you can buy a sports day pass. This may seem costly at £10 for each day pass, but if you only want to watch a few games a season, this will be by far the cheapest option. Now TV includes access to movies as part of the subscription.
If you subscribe to Now TV, you can get £10.50 cashback. Or £3.15 if you upgrade to sports.
BT Sport (For the ‘every now and then’ sports fan)
BT has recently taken a nice slice of sports action away from Sky. For the upcoming season they have managed to acquire the rights 38 premier league matches which are going to be broadcast live. BT has 3 channels, BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN. They also have these channels in HD. Luckily if you are already a BT Broadband or BT Infinity subscriber, you can get BT Sport 1 & 2 for free.
If that’s not the case, you can add BT Sport to your existing BT (or Sky) package for £12 a month.
The third option would be to buy a phone and internet package from BT at a cost of around £31.45 a month for the unlimited broadband package, or £30.45 a month if you buy the infinity package. Both of these options will allow you to stream football over the net to a PC/Laptop or mobile device. There’s nothing to stop you from plugging you Laptop/PC into your TV though!
The basic Infinity will cost you £365.40/year and the basic unlimited package would be £377.40/year.
If you buy via TopCashback you can get up to £10.50 cashback on selected BT packages.
Virgin Media (For those who like football but are more interested in fast internet)
Virgin Media don’t offer their own sports channel, but they do allow you to add Sky Sports to your package. Currently Virgin is trying to come to an agreement with BT so that BT Sport can be added to the package as well. The cheapest option for Virgin is to get the M+ TV package with the Sky Sports bundle (Sky Sports 1 & 2). Sky Sports news is already included in all the packages for free. The M+ and Sky Sports deal will set you back £32.75 a month for the first 6 months then £39.75 after this. There is also a one off cost of £49.95. Virgin Media contracts last for 18 months.
So for the M+ package with Sky Sports, you are looking at paying £434.50 for the first year, but as the contract is 18 months you will end up paying £673
UPDATE: Virgin Media have now added BT Sport to their lineup. This can either be added to an existing package at a cost of £15 a month (£180 per year). Or by buying the XL package which includes BT Sport free.
Unfortunately we don’t offer cashback on just TV at the minute with Virgin. But we do have cashback offers for multi-packages and broadband only!
