UK pay-television operator Virgin Media has continued its war of words with pay-television broadcaster Sky by suggesting its latest set of price rises are more representative of the costs incurred through the new rights deal for football’s English Premier League.
Virgin Media has said that from June 1, customers who take the Sky Sports channels will pay £2 (€2.7/$3) a month more, while those who have Sky Movies will pay an increase of 50p a month. These changes lift the monthly cost of the adds-ons for Virgin Media customers to £29.25 and £15 respectively.
Sky last month said it would increase the total price of its sports package to £47 per month from June. The £1 price rise was announced just six weeks after the broadcaster agreed to pay a record rights fee to retain live domestic rights for the Premier League, the top division of football in the country.
There will also be a £3 per month increase to the company’s family entertainment package, which includes Sky’s most popular shows and its flagship Sky Atlantic channel, to a total of £36 per month.
Commenting on its price rises, Virgin said: “Sky is spreading the cost across its other TV packages, so their customers who don’t take sports or movies will also see the cost of their packages go up … Our rises are simpler and only mean that customers who take the content pay the increased price for that content. We don’t want to make our non-Sky Sports/Movies watching customers subsidise costs for those that do.”
According to the Guardian newspaper, Brigitte Trafford, Virgin Media’s chief corporate affairs officer, added: “This price rise is entirely due to the increase in charges we have to pay Sky … As we have made clear to Ofcom, any increase in the value of the Premier League’s live TV rights eventually ends up hitting the pockets of fans.”
UK media regulator Ofcom last month said it will canvas the opinions of thousands of football fans as it continues its investigation into a complaint from Virgin Media over the means by which Premier League rights are sold to broadcasters.
Ofcom opened its investigation in November under the UK’s Competition Act, following a complaint from Virgin Media that was submitted in September. Virgin Media claimed that “significant consumer harm resulting from escalating rights costs” could be addressed through changes to the model for selling live rights to the top division of English football.
Sky said after acquiring rights for 126 matches per season for three years, from 2016-17 to 2018-19, for a total fee of £4.2bn, that it would “work hard to minimise the impact of higher rights costs on customers.”
In other news, Virgin Media has said customers with Sky Sports subscriptions can now use Android smartphones, tablets and laptops to access the Sky Sports app for the first time.
The app, which was previously only available for iOS devices, means customers can stream the Sky Sports 1 to 5, Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports News HQ channels live on Android devices wherever they have a 3G, 4G or WiFi connection in the UK.