Sky: ‘No pub or club will see a price rise of more than 5%’

Sky has announced that the cost of subscriptions will not rise by more than 5% for any pub or club in the UK.

The statement follows news reported by The Morning Advertiser that fellow sports broadcaster BT Sport will introduce a 4.9% price rise alongside a new training partnership with Google Digital Garage.

Sky Business managing director David Rey said: “We are committed to investing in more of the content that matters to our customers, alongside a new range of game-changing support tools, so that Sky will continue to drive their business – both now and in the future.

“The new season is shaping up to be simply unmissable. All 18 international football games from the new UEFA Nations League tournament will be shown live on Sky Sports – including every England match exclusively live.

“Plus we have the return of pub-packing favourites like the Autumn Internationals, the 2018 Ryder Cup, all 21 F1 Grand Prix live and every England cricket home Test, ODI and T20, only on Sky Sports.

“Earlier in the year, we shared the excellent news that Sky Sports will remain the home of the Premier League until 2022.

“The new deal means we can provide our customers with even more opportunities to drive footfall into their venues, offering more games than any other broadcaster, the biggest head-to-heads with the first-pick match choice every weekend, and match slots at key pub trading times throughout the week – including a new Saturday 7.45pm kick-off.

“This summer we are launching a new range of free, game-changing support tools that will be available to every Sky Sports customer via our dedicated customer-facing website, MySkySports.com.

“Working with our customers we have developed the range to help them understand and promote sport brilliantly, leaving them more time to focus on running their business.

“For customers to continue enjoying the best live sporting experience, 365 days of the year, we occasionally need to review our pricing but we work hard to minimise the impact on our customers by absorbing what we can and so no pub or club will see a price rise of more than 5%.

“On 1 August 2017, to help pubs and clubs manage costs and reduce the impact of the rateable value (RV) changes, we used the lower of the 2010 and 2017 RVs, which we still do today.”

Sky Sports will broadcast 126 matches from the Premier League during the 2018-19 season, with this number rising to 128 as of the 2019-20 season.