Top Tech: Sky vs Virgin Media as one sport plan cut to 66p a day and £260 TV for £0
It's good news for footie fans, as the 2025/26 Premier League season kicks off in a few days, and for keen savers, there are two rival sales allowing fans to cut their costs. As Virgin Media and Sky go up against each other.
Starting with Sky, for only 66p per day, fans can lock into a much cheaper contract ahead of kick-off next week, on Friday, August 15. The provider has dropped the price to £20 per month, which works out to pennies per day when split over a 30-day period.
Over at Virgin Media, the retailer is back with its free TV or £150 bill credit deal. Anyone who takes out a Bigger Combo + Sports HD bundle from £54.99 a month will get a 4K Toshiba TV for £0 - and the plan includes Sky Sports.
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Two plans currently offering a huge saving for consumers, but what do they both include? Tech Commerce Editor Harriet Morphy-Morris and sports TV writer Jake Hackney have dived into the details.
Both the Sky and Virgin Media contracts are set across a 24-month period, so no matter which customers choose, the obligation is the same. Now, onto the price.
At first glance Sky's package seems cheaper at £20 a month for the Sky Sports subscription, but there is a small catch. Without an existing Sky package will need to bundle Sky Sports with a TV and Netflix plan which start at £35 for Essential TV and Sky Sports, as Jake highlights for Wales Online.
The plan comes with access to nine Sky Sports channels, including Main Event, Premier League, Football, F1, Golf and Tennis. It also includes the newly launched Sky Sports+ channel at no extra cost, which offers live streams of more than 1,000 live EFL games, every Carabao Cup fixture and every match from the men's Rugby Super League, according to the Mirror.
This bundle boasts over 100 standard telly channels, including Sky Atlantic, and throws in Netflix and Discovery+ subscriptions for free. For an extra £20, punters can also tack on TNT Sports to their package, a far more wallet-friendly alternative than the £30.99 monthly fee charged by Discovery+ Premium, ensuring they won't miss out on the upcoming season's European clashes.
It comes as Virgin Media unveils its competing Summer of Sports sale, offering hefty markdowns across its own Sky Sports packages until 2 September. The discounts kick off with the Bigger Combo bundle + Sports, which delivers over 200 TV channels, eight of which are Sky Sports offerings such as Main Event, Football and F1.
The bundle also comes with a speedy 516Mbps fibre broadband connection, all of which has been slashed from £65.99 down to £54.99 – a £264 saving. As we pointed out at the start, there's also the newest free TV deal.
This is aimed for shoppers who want both TV and broadband, and especially sports fans. It comes with a choice of 204 TV channels, including a host of sports channels, so customers can watch Premier League football, WSL, F1, Cricket, Golf and Tennis - all in HD.
It also comes with M500 fibre broadband, which has an average download speed of 516Mbps. Now onto a catch for both Sky and Virgin customers - bill hikes. Consumers will face at least two bill hikes during their 24-month contract as each provider ups their prices every April.
Sky added a 6.2% increase on its TV customers this year, but is yet to reveal next year's adjustment. Meanwhile, Virgin has already announced that the Bigger Combo bundle + Sports will jump to £58.49 from April 2026 and then to £61.99 from April 2027.
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