James R | On 19, Jul 2020

NOW is raising the price of its Entertainment Membership this autumn, not long after its last price increase around the same time last year.

The VOD service, which offers contract-free streaming of select Sky channels and other pay-TV content, divides its platform into several passes. An Entertainment Month Pass (currently £8.99 a month), lets you watch several Pay TV channels not on Freeview (including Sky Atlantic, Sky 1, Sky Living, Sky Arts, FOX UK and MTV), plus a couple of hundred of box sets on-demand. A Sky Sports Day/Week/Month Pass (£various) lets you stream the biggest matches and events live on seven Sky Sports channels. A Kids Month Pass (£3.99 a month) streams dedicated channels for kids, including Cartoon Network, and thousands of episodes on-demand. The last is the NOW Cinema Membership (£11.99 a month), which gives streaming access to Sky Cinema’s library on-demand – including 1,000 movies, with a new premiere every day.

NOW’s Entertainment Membership, though, is arguably its flagship offering. Sky’s exclusive deal with HBO and Showtime means that it’s home to some of the most sought-after TV shows around, including HBO’s Succession and The Plot Against America, FOX UK’s The Walking Dead and Sky and HBO’s own Chernobyl, as well as newer originals such as Brassic, Code 404, Gangs of London and Save Me.

In recent months, Sky has also launched two new channels, Sky Nature and Sky Documentaries, which are both included in NOW’s Entertainment Membership, with new titles ranging from music industry exposé On the Record to Hulu’s Hillary Clinton docuseries, Hillary. Sky Comedy also launched earlier this year, becoming the home of exclusives such as Run, The Righteous Gemstones and Betty, plus Saturday Night Live in full. Sky Crime also launched in the UK last year.

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that NOW is bumping up its price by £1 this September, to £9.99 a month – just above Netflix’s mid-tier HD subscription (£8.99 a month) and below Netflix’s Ultra HD subscription (£11.99 a month).

NOW improved its own service last year with the introduction of downloading shows and movies to watch offline. In response to its support of only 720p streaming, it has also introduced a separate NOW Boost subscription of £3 a month to offer selected shows and movies in full HD (1080p), along with Dolby Digital 5.1 support an additional device to stream on simultaneously (three instead of two).

The new price takes effect for new and existing customers from 1st September 2020, so any existing subscribers will see their monthly rate increase from that date onwards.

NOW is also increasing the price of its hayu Pass, which is a built-in way to subscribe to the reality TV service hayu through the NOW interface. That currently costs £3.99 a month, but will increase to £4.99 a month from 1st September 2020. That brings it in line with the normal price of hayu as a standalone app.

For more information about the Entertainment Membership, or to sign up, click here.

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