SKY Sports and BT Sport customers should check if they can save up to £80 or more by cancelling or downgrading their TV contracts over the summer.
If you only pay for sports to watch the English Premier League then you may want to check if you save by ditching your package for the summer as the 2018/19 season ended on May 12.
The Premier League has confirmed that the 2019/20 season will start on August 10 meaning you could save on nearly three month’s worth of charges.
How much you’ll save and whether you can cancel penalty free depends on your contract and given there’s a wide variety of different ways to watch sport on TV it’s far from straightforward.
So it’s best to ring your provider’s customer services team to check. And if you can cancel bear in mind that you’ll like have to give 30 days notice meaning you’re only really saving for two months.
You’re also taking a punt that prices won’t rise in the meantime.
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Of course, if you want to watch other sports over the summer that are exclusive to Sky Sports or BT Sport, such as the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix on Sky or MotoGP on BT, then this isn’t for you,
And some may want to wait until the Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham on June 1, which is being shown on BT Sport.
Here’s what you need to know.
BT says you can get its service as a bundle with BT TV and broadband but this comes as an 18-month contract, so unless you’re outside of this minimum term you’d be charged an exit fee to cancel.
If you get BT Sport with BT broadband and Sky TV, which costs from £15 a month, or BT Sport with Sky TV or TalkTalk TV, which cost from £29.99 a month, these are 12-month contracts.
So again, you can only cancel penalty-free if you’re outside of this minimum term.
The only add-on service BT has is its BT Sport app for BT broadband customers, which costs £10 a month.
We’re awaiting confirmation from BT on whether you can cancel this penalty free at any time and we’ll update this story as soon as we get a response.
If you can, you’d save around £20 for cancelling over the summer.
There are numerous different ways to get Sky Sports but if you have its cheapest deal, which is to pay £18 a month for one add-on channel, then you can cancel penalty-free any time by giving 30 days’ notice.
If you pay for more than one channel as an add-on you can also downgrade penalty-free. So if you have two channels for £22 so you downgrade to one, and if you have three channels for £26 you could switch to two or one.
So say you ditch all three channels now, then that’s a saving of about £52 over the summer.
The cheapest way to get all of Sky Sports’ 11 channels is with its £23 a month package, although you will have to get Sky Entertainment on top for £22 a month.
This is typically sold as an 18-month contract so if you’re still within this you’re unlikely to be able to cancel penalty-free – your best bet is to ring Sky and check.
If you’re a Virgin Media customer you can get Sky Sports as an add-on package for £7 a month, while the cheapest price for BT Sport is £18 added to its Player TV package.
The Sky Sports and BT Sport add-ons can be cancelled penalty-free with 30 days’ notice and added back again whenever you choose.
So that’s a saving of around £36 for cancelling over the next two month’s.
You can also get BT Sport included in Virgin Media’s Full House Bundle, which costs from £53 a month and includes broadband and home phone.
If you’ve got a bundle, such as the Full House package, you can downgrade the sports element but Virgin Media says you would lose any discount you have on the overall bundle.
Virgin Media says how much you’d save by downgrading depends on your contract and current deal.
If you cancel the whole package outright you would be charged an early exit fee.
NOW TV, which is owned by Sky, has a monthly rolling Sky Sports Pass for £33.99 a month.
You can cancel this at any time penalty-free by giving 30 days’ notice and then sign up again whenever you like.
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But it’s not the only provider to raising prices.
Millions of EE customers were hit with a 2.7 per cent mobile bill rise from March 31.
While 02 and Three Mobile hiked bills by 2.5 per cent from April and May respectively.
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