Sky’s NOW Slashes Prices, But There’s A Frustrating Catch

Sky’s standalone streaming service, NOW (formerly known as NOW TV), is slashing prices for its Entertainment and Cinema memberships for a limited time – but there’s one big catch.

Until March 23, 2023, you can get both NOW Entertainment and NOW Cinema as a bundle, for 39% off their usual price.

So instead of paying £9.99 for Entertainment and £9.99 for Cinema – you can get both for £12/month. That’s the good part.

The catch, however, is that this offer comes with a minimum term of six months – which is something unusual for NOW – a service that was always praised for being free of long-term minimum contracts.

This means that customers who claim this offer, will get to keep the discounted price for six months – but they won’t be able to cancel the subscription until those six months are up, and will have to keep paying every month (see full details below).

These minium-term contracts have always been quite common on Sky’s other services – such as Sky Q – and even Sky Stream and Sky Glass now have optional long-term contract discounts.  

NOW is also currently offering a discount on its Sky Sports membership – for up to 12 months – but there’s no minimum term on that offer, and customers can cancel anytime.

These discounts have come in shortly after a recent price increase, where NOW’s Sky Sports membership has gone up by £1/month, and the NOW Boost add-on has gone up by £1/month as well.

NOW is Sky’s long-running standalone streaming service that doesn’t usually require a long-term contract and works as an app on many supported devices.

Late last year, Sky also launched its Sky Stream, which is also a streaming service from Sky – but one that only works with the Sky Stream puck, and has a different interface (and pricing scheme) – See our Sky Stream VS NOW comparison.

NOW offers three main content packages (“memberships”):

• NOW Entertainment, normally at £9.99/m, with Sky’s TV channels, including Sky Atlantic, and content for kids.
• NOW Cinema, normally at £9.99/month. Identical to the Sky Cinema plan on Sky, with new blockbusters and back-catalogue films.
• NOW Sky Sports, normally at £33.99/month. Almost identical to Sky Sports on Sky (with Racing, Mix and News being part of this membership instead of Entertainment).

Then there’s NOW Boost, which costs £6/month. It’s an add-on, which adds Full HD (1080p) video quality, Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, no adverts (for on-demand content – you’ll still see adverts on Sky’s live channels), and the ability to stream on up to 3 devices at the same time (instead of just one).

NOW is available on a wide range of streaming devices, including Amazon’s Fire TV, Roku, Google’s Chromecast, mobile phones, tablets and more (see our full NOW review).

NOW’s March Offer: Pay Less, Sign Up For Longer

As mentioned, NOW was always known for being a service with a rolling, monthly contract that you can cancel anytime.

It still is – but this month’s offer (which is optional, of course) – switches things up a bit.

Instead of paying £19.98/month for both NOW Entertainment and NOW Cinema – you can get them as a bundle for just £12/month, for six months.

But, unlike NOW deals of the past – those six months are not UP TO six months. Instead, they’re a minimum term – which means you’re bound to those £12/month for six months.

You can technically cancel before the six months are up – but the cancellation will only take effect when your minimum term is over.

Once those six months are up – your subscription will auto-renew at full price, so you’ll start paying £19.98/month. Before that happens, however, you can cancel your subscription.

Along with this offer, you also get a 7-day free trial of NOW Boost – which will then renew at its normal £6/month price – but you CAN cancel boost before those 7 days are up, as it’s not a part of the six-month minimum term.

Is This A Good Deal?

The whole point of cord cutting and streaming TV, in my eyes, is the flexibility that you get – subscribe to Netflix for a couple of months, then cancel and switch to Disney+, then get a month of NOW to watch that one show you’re interested in… and when you go on holiday, or you’re having rough financial times – just cancel everything.

Long-term contracts with minimum terms take away that flexibility.

If, however, you’re definitely planning to be a NOW subscriber for six months or more (for both Entertainment and Cinema) – then you might as well subscribe to it at the discounted price.

But there are almost always offers and discounts for NOW – so signing up for six months in advance – will be questionable for many.