As ever it seems like the football season has only just ended, and that’s not far from the truth with the Women’s Euros and Club World Cup still dominating headlines just a few weeks ago.
But the Premier League is back this weekend, and for many fans in lower leagues, their teams kicked off almost a fortnight ago.
As a Crystal Palace fan, for the first time we’ve not just got league football but European matches, too.
Since I don’t live in London any more, scheduling trips down south to coincide with games isn’t easy. And it’s not cheap either – it can easily cost £60, if not more, for a ticket. I’ll try to see some away games closer to where I live and, thanks to a £30 match ticket cap, these are a bargain.
For the majority of games though, I’ll be relying on TV to see how my beloved Eagles get on – especially in our adventures on the continent. And that’s how many top tier fans are likely to engage in the coming season.
How to get your footy fix without breaking the bank?
But even though a subscription to Sky Sports and TNT Sports will cost less than a season ticket, that doesn’t make it cheap.
Go via the big pay-TV companies such as Sky, Virgin and EE TV, and you’ll be locking yourself into long contracts, as much as two years, while also committing yourself (and your wallet) to paying for other TV channels.
As an example, a new Sky Q customer will be paying £32 a month for the Essential TV channels, another £19 a month for Sky Sports and a further £24 a month for TNT Sports. That’s £75 a month or £900 a year. And that’s a discounted price! Full whack would add another £24 a month on top. Plus you’d need to pay even more for HD viewing.
The good news is you can pay less, though with some compromises. You can call up and haggle, though that will still lock you in.
I’d personally kick the big guns into touch, and transfer over to pay-as-you-go streaming services. So you will forfeit the ability to record, but with so much TV viewing now on apps like iPlayer, Netflix and Disney, this shouldn’t be too much of a shock.
Though you might bump into a dodgy bloke in a pub sharing a cracked Firestick, the fair way to do this is via NOW (which is owned by Sky) for Sky Sports and Discovery+ (owners of TNT Sports).
Both will let you stream on a month-by-month basis without further commitment or the requirement to sign up for extra channels. At full price this won’t seem any cheaper at first.
A month Sky Sports pass on NOW costs £34.99, and a month of Discovery+ Premium is £30.99. Combined that’s only £9 less than the welcome offer I spotted for Sky Q.
If you do want the additional channels provided in that Sky Q deal, that could be worth paying.
However, you now need to factor in the flexibility. If your team isn’t on every week (and if you don’t support one of the big sides in the Premier League, they won’t be. Especially so on TNT Sports where there are far fewer matches outside of European football), there will be periods where you can cancel your pass.
And if you’re not fussed about other sports, you can do this in the off-season too. When you want to watch again, you can reactivate your membership.
And with NOW/Sky Sports, you can also get that £34.99 down thanks to regular offers. I’m keeping an eye out as an ex-customer for a £19.99 season pass this week, which has appeared most years via email. But failing that I’d hope to get the price down to £26.
Even if I pay full price, I’ll be using my tried and tested cancellation hack. With most NOW passes, including Sport, if you go through the cancellation process, you’ll usually be offered a discount to stay for another month. The only drawback in recent months is these promotions sometimes come with a six-month minimum so may not be worth it.
A quick final mention for anyone following Champions League matches. Some games will be shown on Amazon Prime. Rather than pay £95 for a year, I’d recommend paying for the Prime Video-only membership. For £5.99 a month you can cancel at any time, or if you want extra Amazon features, just pay an extra £3 in those months to upgrade.