Sky to up price of Sports, Family bundles

Sky is set to increase the price of its Sports and Family channel bundles this summer, announcing the move just five weeks after paying record fees to keep its live Premier League football rights.

The cost of Sky’s Sports Bundle – which includes all seven Sky Sports channels – will increase by £1 (€1.39) per-month to £25.50 from June 1. Viewers subscribing to sport must also pay for Sky’s Original Bundle of entertainment channels, which will remain priced at £21.50.

This means that from the summer, viewers will have to pay a total of £47 a month to access premium sports content.

The Family Bundle – which includes 75 channels and 300 Sky Box Sets of content – will go up by £3 per-month to £36.

Commenting on the price rise, Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at financial spread-betting firm Finspreads.com said: “Sky did say at the time of the [Premier League] auction that it would cover the record fees by increasing prices and cutting costs, however as price rises at Sky usually happen in September the timing of the price hike has certainly surprised the market.”

However, a Sky spokesperson defended the move, saying that bills will, on average, rise by “less than £3 per month.”

“We work hard to make Sky the best value entertainment choice for subscribers. This year we’ll bring our customers even more of the TV they want to watch, including the best US shows and unmissable British drama. Meanwhile Sky Sports will offer an unrivalled choice of top quality sport. We’ll also bring more of the shows everyone’s talking about to Sky Box Sets,” said the spokesperson.

Last month, Sky agreed to pay £1.39 billion (€1.87 billion) per year for bulk of live Premier League football rights for the 2016/2017 to 2018/2019 seasons. This comes to a total of £4.2 billion for the three years, which marks an 83% increase on the cost of its existing contract.

BT will pay £320 million per season, a total of £960 million for the three seasons, to take the remainder of the games, with the cost of its contract rising by a total of 30%.