With so many TV and streaming services raising their prices this month, it was only a matter of time before Sky’s streaming service NOW (formerly known as NOW TV) joined the party – and indeed, some of its prices are going up.
The good news is that most of NOW’s prices are staying the same (for now, at least) – but there’s one major increase that will disappoint sports fans.
Starting on April 30 (at midnight), NOW’s Day Membership for Sky Sports -which lets you watch all of Sky’s sports channels for 24 hours – will go up from £11.99 to £14.99 – a whopping 25% increase, for just a single day of sports streaming (see below for what it includes).
This increase follows the recent price hikes for Dazn Sports and TNT Sports / Discovery+ Premium. Sky’s own plans on Sky Stream and Sky Glass have also gone up this month.
A NOW spokesperson told Cord Busters: “We always try to keep prices as low as possible while continuing to offer the best member experience and flexible access to Sky Sports unrivalled sports coverage.”
NOW is Sky’s original standalone streaming service, that doesn’t require a long-term contract and works as an app on many supported devices (unlike Sky Stream, which only works on a specific device – See our Sky Stream VS NOW comparison).
NOW offers three main content packages (“memberships”):
- NOW Entertainment, at £9.99/month, with Sky’s TV channels, including Sky Atlantic, and content for kids.
- NOW Cinema, at £9.99/month. Identical to the Sky Cinema plan Sky, with new blockbusters and back-catalogue films.
- NOW Sky Sports, currently at £34.99/month or £11.99/day. 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 and 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), the ability to stream on up to 3 devices at the same time (instead of just one), and smoother sporting action, as all the Sky Sports channels stream at 50 frames per second when you have Boost).
NOW is available on a wide range of streaming devices, including Amazon’s Fire TV, Roku, Google’s Chromecast, mobile phones, tablets and more.
NOW Sports Membership Getting More Expensive
NOW’s Sky Sports pass is available in two formats – you can either pay for a full month (£34.99/month, or less if you snag a special deal – it’s currently available for £26/month, for example), or you can pay for just one day.
With the Sports membership, you get 12 LIVE Sports channels:
- Sky Sports Main Event: Live Premier League football plus international qualifiers and the biggest live events from other channels
- Sky Tennis
- Sky Sports Premier League
- Sky Sports Football
- Sky Sports Cricket
- Sky Sports Golf
- Sky Sports F1
- Sky Sports Action
- Sky Sports Arena
- Sky Sports News
- Sky Sports Mix
- Sky Sports Racing
In addition to the live channels, you can also get some of the sporting events and highlights (more than 1,000 hours) on demand.
The Day Membership is useful when you want to watch just one specific sporting event on a specific day. For £11.99, you can watch all the sports channels for 24 hours (there used to be a Weekly pass, which is no longer available).
But, from April 30, 2024, the price of the Day Membership is jumping up to £14.99.
This means that if you want to watch two events on two different days in a single month, you might as well get the discounted Monthly pass (currently at £26/month) rather than pay for two-day memberships, which would now cost £29.98.
If you can’t get the full monthly membership at a discount, then you’re still better off paying for two days (£29.98 instead of £34.99), but just barely.
Either way, while it’s still a decent option if there’s really just one day of sports you want to watch in a single month – NOW is definitely pushing people towards the monthly membership with this substantial price increase.
As mentioned, NOW confirmed the price increase to us, adding that “NOW is the only place you can stream Sky Sports just for the day, and our members continue to enjoy all the action from the Premiere League, F1, and Women’s Super League, as well as new sports rights and channels such as our brand new Tennis Channel, which will show the ATP and WTA Tours.
“Later in the year, expanded football action will be available as Sky Sports becomes the home of the EFL.”
The good news is that, as of this writing, we’re not aware of any price increases planned for NOW’s Entertainment and Cinema memberships or the monthly Sports memberships—though, as always, those may come later in the year.
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Yet another price increase just for profit – we’re forced to pay to watch a sport we love with no alternative – thought that’s called a monopoly yet it all allowed – modern pirates that’s what it actually is… held over a barrel.
If you pay it then you enable them, with F1 I just watch the highlights on CH4 or Youtube, SKY are losing so many customers those who are left will pay more. I paid for years for stuff I never watched because it became habitual, now I pay SKY zero and after six months every week a new offer comes through the post at less than the monthly fee I was paying, pity they didn’t make these offers before I sent back the SKY Q box and cables, what a joke. I will not go back!
If watching SKY’s Soccer, Cricket or Golf is affordable to your budget then keep paying SKY. I can find F1, soccer, cricket and golf on other free outlets and in six months have saved £300 plus. Sky entertainment and much of their other stuff is not as good as free ITVx or Netflix!
Sky prices are way too much, looks like NOW are following the trend. I ditched SKY last year and haven’t missed them at all. I had Sports for F1 and was paying for stuff I didn’t want like Soccer. Best value is ITVx, its free, so is Ch4 for F1…..saved myself £40 a month or nearly £500 a year.