Over 1.5 million people have cancelled Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime subscriptions in the last three months, according to new research. Market research firm Kantar says cancellations have risen to their highest ever level as the cost of living crisis hits homes.
There may be a cheaper way to save on TV costs than cancelling your subscriptions. This is because the biggest cost to watching TV comes from expensive Sky, BT and Virgin Media packages.
It is not possible to cancel a package if you are still in the contract period but if you are coming to the end of your contract there may be a money-saving option that lets you access a number of streaming services and still save hundreds of pounds. It may even be possible to still keep movies, sport and subscriptions to watch TV series while still saving on expensive packages.
Cancel Sky and BT
The cheapest Sky subscription is £26 per month and you also get Netflix included in that price. That does not get you Sky Cinema, Sky Entertainment and Sky Sports because they are only available on the higher value subscriptions. Overall the cheapest Sky package costs £312 per year. With Sport that rises to £552 per year.
The cheapest Netflix subscription is £71.88 each year, or £5.99 per month. If you cancel Sky that is a saving of £240.12 each year based on the cheapest package and £480 based on the sport package.
BT and Virgin offer other options but around the same price point. Many of their deals include a broadband option but even if you have broadband you can remove the TV packages when your contract is up.
You can then buy a Fire TV stick to ensure you get streaming services such as iPlayer, 4oD and ITV Player on your TV, priced at £30. That means you are paying just over £100 per year to get access to Netflix and all of the terrestrial TV channels.
If you want a bit more functionality you can pay for a Freeview box. The most popular Freeview boxes include the £200 Freesat box, which has 500GB of storage and over 170 channels as well as recording for up to four programmes at a time. Others include Humax, which is on sale at Currys for £170 and also has 500GB of storage.
Of course, cancelling Sky means you will no longer have access to Sky's channels. It may be that you have a subscription because you want access to sport or movies.
If you want full access to sport or movie packages a Sky subscription is probably the cheapest option. If you only want occasional access to sport, movies or Sky TV series there are more flexible options available. NowTV passes cost around £33.99 for the month for sport, while BT Sport also has sport monthly packages. This means you can pick and choose which months you want access to Sky Sports or BT Sport.
For example, if you follow football you may not need access during the summer months but may want to buy a month for May when finals such as the Champions League and FA Cup take place.
The cheapest Sky Sport package of £552 per year means you can buy a Netflix subscription, buy a Fire Stick, buy a Sport pass for seven months of the year and still spend less on TV than paying monthly for Sky.
Switch your streaming
For those who want access to television series you can get a Firestick and Netflix for around £100 a year. Then you can take advantage of the various streaming services to add and cancel as you need.
For example, you can add Disney+ for a couple of months of the year and binge your favourite shows before cancelling. You can do the same for Amazon Prime or even NowTV to access Sky's channels. This will cost around £8-£10 per month depending on the streaming service and if you do one a month the most you will pay is £120 per year - significantly less than the cheapest Sky subscription available.
