If you only want to watch Premier League football on Sky Sports, you can get Sky Sports 1 on its own with most pay TV bundles.
While price rises have seen all of the Sky Sports bundles creep up in cost, savvy football fans can save a few pennies every month by signing up for Sky Sports 1 only.
This means you can get all of the Premier League games Sky’s showing this season without having to pay for other channels you might not be bothered about, like Sky Sports F1 or Sky Sports 3.
You can also stream games live on Now TV, which offers a range of flexible price options and doesn’t require you to be a Sky TV customer or have any pay TV service at all.
Not every option lets you pick and choose channels, so bear that in mind. Here’s what you can (and can’t) get from every service that sells Sky Sports.
With Sky TV – £13/month
Sky TV customers can get Sky Sports 1 on it’s own for £13/month.
You will need to take one of Sky’s basic bundles of channels in order to get Sky Sports 1, the cheapest of which is the Original Bundle (£20/month), which will see you paying £33/month in total.
If you want to watch Sky Sports 1 in HD, you’ll need to pay £5.25/month for the HD Pack and also take out the Family Bundle (£36/month). You can’t currently get the HD Pack with either of Sky’s other bundles.
With the £13/month for Sky Sports 1, this comes to £54.25/month.
Sky+HD boxes, which include a 500GB hard drive as standard (185 hours of SD, 60 hours of HD) are included with all Sky TV subscriptions.
All Sky TV subscribers get access to Sky Go as standard, which means you can stream games live on up to two devices – including iOS and Android phones and tablets, Windows and Mac desktops and laptops and Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.
Sky Go Extra – which lets you watch on up to four devices, costs an additional £5/month.
With Virgin Media – £19/month
Provided your Virgin Media Big Bundle doesn’t come with all Sky Sports channels already included, you can get Sky Sports 1 on its own with a Virgin TV package for an extra £19/month.
The cheapest Virgin TV service you can get is More TV, which costs £13/month. This comes to £32/month in total.
Sky Sports 1 in HD sees you having to pay an extra £7/month on top of this, taking everything up to £39/month.
Virgin TV’s cheapest service comes with a basic driveless set-top box, which means you won’t be able to record any games.
If you want to record any Sky Sports games on Virgin TV, you’ll need a deal which gives you a Virgin Media TiVo box. The cheapest deal with a TiVo box (500GB – 250 hours of SD, 50 hours of HD) costs £18/month. With Sky Sports 1 on top, this totals £37/month.
To get Sky Sports 1 in HD with a Virgin Media TiVo set-top box will cost you £44/month.
BT TV – £16.50/month
You can only currently get Sky Sports 1 or 2 with BT TV for £16.50/month or £22/month for both.
To get Sky Sports with BT TV, you’ll need a BT Infinity service. BT Infinity is BT’s FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet)-based broadband service that’s available in over 80 per cent of UK premises.
At its cheapest, BT Infinity currently costs £10/month plus line rental (£17.99/month for the standard rate).
BT TV offers you the TV Starter service for no extra cost. This gives you a basic set-top box which gives you all of the same channels you’d get on Freeview HD plus extra channels and catch-up content delivered over the broadband connection. The TV Starter box is driveless, so you won’t be able to record any games.
The Entertainment Plus service costs £7.50/month and comes with a YouView box with a 500GB drive (300 hours SD, 125 hours HD).
Entertainment Ultra HD costs £15/month and gives you a YouView box with a 1TB drive (600 hours SD, 250 hours HD).
You can only get Sky Sports 1 costs £16.50/month on top of your BT TV package on a rolling monthly basis – this means you’re free to cancel after 30 days and opt out during off-season months.
With the entry-level TV Starter service (£0/month) BT Infinity 1 (£10/month), standard line rental (£17.99/month), Sky Sports (£16.50/month) costs £44.49/month. If you want to be able to record games, the cheapest deal – Entertainment Plus – sees you paying a grand total of £51.99/month.
Sky Sports isn’t currently available in HD on BT TV.
TalkTalk TV – £11/month
TalkTalk TV doesn’t let punters pick and choose Sky Sports channels, but it is selling the complete Sky Sports bundle for £11/month for the duration of the 2015/16 season.
Like BT, it’s also selling this on a rolling, 30-day basis, meaning it’s easy for you to cancel during off season months.
To get TalkTalk TV you will need to be a TalkTalk broadband customer and you’ll have to sign up for either TalkTalk Essentials or TalkTalk Plus TV.
Essentials TV, which comes with a driveless YouView set-top box, costs £7.50/month for the first three months and £10/month after that.
Plus TV costs £10/month. The set-top box comes with a 350 GB hard drive (200 hours SD, 80 hours HD).
Both of the set-top boxes give you access to digital terrestrial channels delivered through your aerial and extra pay TV channels delivered over a broadband connection.
You’ll need to pay TalkTalk line rental with both services (£16.70/month, £180.36/year).
Sky Sports isn’t currently available in HD from TalkTalk TV.
Now TV
Now TV is Sky’s on-demand streaming service aimed at non-Sky TV subscribers. It gives you access to all of Sky’s premium content including Sky Sports on a number of price plans.
You can get a 24 hour pass for £6.99, which gives you a day’s access to all of the Sky Sports channels.
This is by far the cheapest option if you only want to watch a couple of games a month. If you want more, you can reach for a weekly pass which costs £10.99 or a monthly pass, which costs £31.99.
Now TV doesn’t currently offer any live streams of games in HD.
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