Sky’s NOW Cinema Discounts Gone: Full Price Or Nothing

Sky’s NOW streaming service has pulled its Cinema discount deals entirely – at least for now – leaving movie fans with just one option: pay the full £9.99 monthly rate or go without.

As of this writing, there’s no discounted Cinema membership available at all for new subscribers. The previous £6.99/month deal is gone, and so is the popular £13.99 combined Entertainment and Cinema bundle (both required a 6-month minimum term).

If you want NOW’s movie channels, you’ll need to pay full price on a rolling monthly contract.

The disappearance comes amid chaotic testing that’s seen discount offers change not just weekly but sometimes within hours, with different users seeing completely different deals depending on their device or browsing method.

While there are still ways to get discounts if you know where to look (see below), it’s a far cry from the predictable pricing that streaming subscribers have come to expect.

What’s Available Right Now?

For those unfamiliar with NOW (formerly NOW TV), it’s Sky’s standalone streaming service that works entirely through apps on various devices – from Smart TVs and streaming sticks to phones and tablets.

Unlike Sky’s main services that require specific hardware, NOW operates on a membership basis with three main packages: Entertainment (normally £9.99/month for Sky’s TV channels including Sky Atlantic), Cinema (£9.99/month for Sky’s movie channels), and Sports (£34.99/month for all Sky Sports channels).

At the moment, the Cinema membership is only available at its full £9.99/month price with no minimum commitment. There are no discount deals, no bundle offers, and no long-term savings available, when taken directly.

The Entertainment membership still has its 6-month discount deal at £6.99/month, where you pay less, but lose some flexibility.

Sports currently offers a discount at £28/month, but requires a 6-month minimum term – down from the 12-month requirement we saw when the Premier League season started.

NOW also offers two optional Boost tiers that enhance the basic viewing experience. Without Boost, you’re limited to 720p video, can only stream on one device at a time, and you’ll see adverts on on-demand content.

The Boost add-ons remove these limitations and add premium features.

The Boost add-ons remain on monthly contracts. You can still add NOW Boost (£6/month for Full HD, Dolby Digital 5.1, no adverts on on-demand content, and streaming on up to 2 devices) or Ultra Boost (£9/month, which adds 4K, Dolby Atmos, and streaming on up to 3 devices) without any long-term commitment.

The A/B Testing Whirlwind

What’s particularly striking about NOW’s current approach is just how much testing appears to be going on behind the scenes. Different users are seeing completely different offers, sometimes simultaneously.

Last week, I saw the same Entertainment membership with 6-month, 9-month, and 12-month minimum term offers – not as a progression over time, but as concurrent offers shown to different users or on different devices.

Browse on your desktop and you might see a 6-month deal. Switch to your phone and suddenly it’s 9 months. Try incognito mode and the offer might disappear entirely.

As of this writing, though, the Entertainment offer seems to have settled on the long-running 6 months for £6.99/month.

This level of A/B testing suggests NOW is actively experimenting to find the optimal balance between discount depth, contract length, and subscriber acceptance.

But for consumers, it creates a confusing and unpredictable experience where the deal you saw yesterday might be gone today, or might never have been shown to you in the first place.

Why Cinema Might Be Different

The complete removal of Cinema discount deals could signal several things. Movie content is expensive to license, and Sky’s Cinema channels feature recent blockbusters and premium content that commands high fees from studios.

Unlike Entertainment content, which includes many Sky-produced shows, Cinema relies heavily on third-party movie studios.

The timing might also reflect the movie industry’s recovery from the Covid years. During 2020-2022, Cinema subscriptions were less compelling when very few new blockbusters were being released and studios were delaying major releases.

Now that the film industry is back to full production and cinemas are packed with new releases, NOW might feel confident that the Cinema membership offers enough value to justify the full price point.

Alternatively, this could simply be another test. Given how frequently NOW’s offers have been changing, the absence of Cinema deals might be temporary – a way of measuring how price-sensitive Cinema subscribers really are when faced with full-price-only options.

It’s entirely possible that by the time you’re reading this, the discount offer will have returned.

The Streaming Trend

The Cinema discount removal follows our previous coverage of NOW’s shifting contract strategies.

When minimum-term deals first appeared in March 2023, they were 6-month commitments for Entertainment and Cinema bundles. We’ve since seen 12-month contracts for Sports and varying terms for Entertainment deals.

NOW’s move towards testing different approaches isn’t happening in isolation. Other streaming services are also trying different ways to keep subscribers around longer and generate more predictable income.

Disney+ offers annual subscriptions at £89.90 per year for its Standard plan (compared to £8.99 monthly), saving subscribers about £17 annually.

Apple TV+ recently increased its monthly price to £9.99 but kept its annual subscription at £89 per year. Paramount+ in the UK offers three tiers with annual savings of about 26% across all plans.

But none of these services change their discount offers with the frequency that NOW appears to be doing. 

What This Means for Cinema Subscribers

If you’re interested in NOW Cinema, your options are currently limited to the full £9.99/month flexible rate.

There’s no direct way to save money through longer commitments, and there’s no bundle deal to make Entertainment and Cinema together more affordable.

The silver lining is that without any minimum-term requirements, you have complete flexibility.

Subscribe for a month to catch up on new releases, then cancel without penalty. It’s actually a return to NOW’s original promise of complete flexibility, even if it comes at a higher cost.

Of course, discounts might still be available through the back door. NOW has a long history of offering better deals to subscribers who attempt to cancel – often presenting counter-offers at reduced prices to retain customers.

This practice likely continues for Cinema memberships, so if you’re willing to go through the cancellation process, you might still find a way to pay less than the standard £9.99.

There’s no guarantee this will work, and it’s certainly more hassle than just taking an advertised discount, but it’s worth trying if you’re price-sensitive.

Given NOW’s pattern of constant testing and change, it’s entirely possible that Cinema discounts will return in some form. The service has shown it’s willing to experiment with different approaches, so these full-price-only terms might be temporary.

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