Sky ups its prices after record Premier League payout

Sky is to increase its prices for sports and family entertainment packages in the UK, the broadcaster has announced.

The news comes just six weeks after Sky agreed to pay record fees for the rights to show English Premier League football matches – paying £1,392 million per annum for each of the three years of the new agreement, representing an 83% increase over the cost of the existing contract.

Ordinarily, Sky would announce price hikes in September, but the company this week announced the price of a sports TV package would rise by £1 to £47 a month. The family bundle service will rise by £3 a month to £36.

Commenting on the price changes, Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at Finspreads, said that Sky had always warned 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 has surprised the market.

“Furthermore, the fact that the sports packages have a smaller price increase than the family bundle demonstrates that Sky is slightly nervous of losing sports customers to BT, who won the rights to 42 games this season,” Cincotta said.

“That said, losing rights tends not to result in a loss of subscribers; more generally it impacts the pricing power of the provider so it will be interesting to see what price adjustments are made in the future.”