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As a cricket fan, one of the main problems with Sky Sports is that you basically end up paying for a load of channels you won’t watch.
You can subscribe to Sky Sports Cricket without all the other sports channels these days – but only if you first commit to a Sky TV package and a long contract. This basically means that you end up paying even when there’s no cricket on at all.
Go through Sky themselves and at the time of writing you’ll pay £18 a month for Sky Sports Cricket plus £22 a month for their Entertainment Package on an 18-month contract.
If you only want to watch cricket, £720 is a lot.
Sky do have a pay-as-you-go service too though: Now TV. We’ve been giving it a whirl for the England v West Indies series. It allows you to get access to Sky Sports without the long-term commitment, so we figure it’ll be cheaper in the long run. You can also access it via the internet, so you don’t need a load of gear.
We figured we could buy a one-month Sky Sports pass for £33 (actually £30 for the first month and a USB stick thing) and it would cover all three Tests. You can pay for a day or a week as well (which makes more sense now that the Test series is well underway).
You can sign up here. (Just to let you know that’s an affiliate link, so we get a small cut if you do so. (And if you do – cheers.))
The alternative to Now TV is to get Sky Sports through our broadband provider. But as we said at the start, that means (a) signing up to a long contract and (b) paying for a whole bunch of other channels we’ll never watch – something we’ve always found completely irritating.
In an ideal world we’d pay for Sky Sports Cricket only – but for the minute this seems to be the best option.
We’ve listed some of the pros and cons here. It’s not all positive. The main thing we’ll miss is the ability to record the highlights or watch them on-demand.
Similar deliveries:
Sky Sports Cricket is going to be cheaper and you won’t have to subscribe
The pros and cons of using Now TV to watch Sky Sports Cricket
Now TV might work out the cheapest way to watch the Ashes if all you really want to watch is the cricket
You can now watch the whole of the rest of the World Cup on Sky Sports for £34 (and you don’t need any extra equipment or anything)
That link appears to be broken.
Could be regional. Should have stated it’s a UK thing.
Is the link knackered for anyone else? It works for us.
Works for me.
Not that I want to watch England play cricket at the moment, but it works.
Maybe it was a work thing. Though I can’t imagine why. Anyway it did work now. Is there a time limit on this or will that link work forever more?
I am definitely getting NowTV when the final season of Game of Thrones comes out.
Also, @KC, I live in London. It is south of the river though. So there is that
If you click through that link when you sign up, we should get a much-appreciated percentage at no cost to yourself. The link lasts but it will need to have been fairly freshly-clicked for us to get credit.
You can’t watch the highlights on demand? That seems incredibly backwards, and rules it out as an option as far as I’m concerned.
It is a major shortcoming. Guess they have to keep the main ‘product’ sufficiently appealing that people will pay for phone line and broadband and TV package to then have the opportunity to pay even more on top of that for a long-term sports package contract.
It’s asinine imo. I don’t have the time to watch a days cricket. I do have an hour at the end of the day to watch highlights. And I would love to be able to watch the highlights of f the day’s action at my convenience.
Innit.
Is there a site we can go to and pay a small sum to ensure that we are barred from watching England playing? A bit like one of those gambling addiction self exclusion schemes? Pay quite a large sum even?
You could move to France. It’s harder to watch cricket there and the weather is slightly better as a bonus.
Extremist!
Can you watch French Cricket there?
The other good thing about Now TV is you can use one account across four boxes and watch any two at the same time. This means you can share an account with someone. I’m reasonably sure this is not even illegal (this does not constitute legal advice). If you sign up at the right time it’s very good value. They did a deal in August with 10 months for £180. So between two people that’s £9 a month.
It’s four months of Sky Sports for £80 at the minute, but we didn’t recommend it because there isn’t actually all that much England cricket in the next four months (relatively speaking).
You really don’t want to know that I pay an extra US$10 to have Willow & their 24/7 cricket included with my cable package, Hotstar is $7.99 a month & I now have to give ESPN $5 a month to watch the Blackcaps at home. Anything I watch on mobile can be Chromecasted to the TV. ESPN’s highlights do suck though, and their replays are only up for 30 days, while Willow, who actually give a fuck about cricket, keep them up for months.