The cheapest TV sports packages

by John Fitzsimons on 09 August 2011  |  4 comments
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Watching sport on TV is not always cheap. We look at the most competitive packages.

With the Premier League season kicking off on Saturday, now is the time that many of us turn our minds towards what sport we want to watch on TV over the coming season. Of course, there’s more than just football on TV – everything from cricket to darts and pool is televised these days. But what is the cheapest way to watch some sport on the box?

The cheapest option of all

Undoubtedly, the most penny-pinching way of watching sport on your TV is to stick to Freeview or Freesat. A set-top box will set you back about £30 in a one-off payment, but you’ll have access to things like Formula 1 on the BBC, Test cricket highlights on Channel Five, and a range of European football and boxing on ITV’s digital channels, which usually just churn out repeats of Poirot for twelve hours a day.

Some of these boxes now include high definition channels, so if you really want to see Wayne Rooney’s hairplugs in all their glory, this is one way to do it.

Keeping it simple

The next stage up is to sign up for a package from one of the main digital TV providers.

Let’s start with Virgin. If you go with the firm’s most basic TV deal, the M+, you get a number of sports channels included. They are At The Races, Eurosport, Eurosport 2 and Sky Sports News, so you’re well covered for horse racing, football gossip and slightly obscure tennis and football competitions. This package will set you back £3.25 a month for the first six months, moving up to £6.50 a month after that, while you’ll also need to hand over £13.90 a month for a Virgin phone line.

With Sky, the cheapest way of getting some sport is to sign up for either Sky Sports 1 or Sky Sports 2 only, which will set you back £12.25 a month. However, you’ll already need to have signed up to their standard TV pack, (which includes channels like Sky1 and Living) at £19.50 a month, so you’re looking at a minimum of £31.75 a month.

With BT Vision, the TV Essential package is just £4 a month, and you can add either Sky Sports 1 or 2 to that for an additional £12.30. However, you will also need to sign up for BT broadband.

The full monty

So, if you want the full sports services on offer from the three main providers, what sort of outlay are you looking at?

On Sky, the full Sports pack – Sky Sports1, 2, 3 and 4 – will set you back £20.25. You can then get ESPN and ESPN America for an additional £9. So you’ll be forking out a minimum of £48.75 a month, depending on which additional packs you go with.

With Virgin, the full Sky Sports collection will cost you £22.50 a month. And the only TV package which includes ESPN is the XL, which sets you back £12.25 a month for the first six months, and then £24 a month afterwards.

So you’ll be spending £48.65 for all of the sports channels, and that’s just in the first six months – after that it will jump to a whopping £60.40 a month!

As for BT, the TV Unlimited package includes ESPN, and costs £12.50 a month. But to then add the full suite of Sky Sports channels, it’s then a further £17.40 a month (while a £10 ‘viewing card’ is also required). With line rental of £10 on top, that’s £39.90, ignoring the one-off viewing card payment.

Topping up

A further option for Freeview users is to simply top up their channels, by using TopUpTV. This is a service that, as the name suggests, allows you to top up what you can watch on your TV, and sports channels are a big part of the proposition.

Best of all there’s no minimum contract, so you can cancel at any time. For Sky Sports 1, it will cost you £23.99 per month, for Sky Sports 1 and 2 it will set you back £31.99, for ESPN it will cost £9.99 per month, for Sky Sports 1 and ESPN it will cost £31.99, while for all three you’ll need to shell out £39.99.

On top of all that you’ll need a special TopUpTV box, which costs a minimum of £19.99.   

If you don’t use Sky, Virgin or BT for your broadband already, and don’t fancy switching to them for the sake of extra digital TV channels, this may work out as the best option.

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