NENT Group and Sky Sports to resume billing customers in June

With sports events around Europe beginning to restart, both Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT Group) and Sky have said that they will resume billing customers for their sports packages.

Both NENT and Sky made moves to placate customers as the sports world ground to a halt in March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. NENT Group temporarily reduced the prices of Viaplay Sports, while Sky allowed users to temporarily pause their subscriptions to Sky Sports.

NENT Group said that it will revert to the regular pricing for its Viaplay sports packages in Sweden, Denmark and Finland from July 1 and in Norway at a later date. Viaplay’s sports packages will return to their previous monthly prices of SEK 399 in Sweden, DKK 309 in Denmark and EUR 29.99 in Finland.

Anders Jensen, NENT Group President and CEO: “Just like sports fans everywhere, we are delighted to see live sports returning to the screen, and we expect even more to follow in the coming weeks. The situation in recent months has been unprecedented, and our fast and proactive move in March to lower our sports prices was the right thing to do for customers. We were the first to do this and most others have followed suit. It has been fantastic to see how much our sports subscribers have enjoyed the full range of originals, films, series, documentaries and kids’ content on Viaplay. Fans can now look forward to watching even more live Premier League, Superliga and Bundesliga games, and much more, at the discounted price during June before we return to our normal pricing in July.”

Sky meanwhile will begin charging customers who paused their subscriptions in June, and users do not have to take any action to unfreeze their subscriptions. It said that billing will resume for Sky Sports Golf and Premier League subscribers including those on Complete Sky Sports, single, two, or three channel packs in June. Customers will not be charged for Sports for any days before June 19, with the English Premier League set to return from June 17.

In a post on the Sky community forum, a spokesperson for the operator said: “We are beginning the process of returning paused sport customers to billing, which requires sufficient time to communicate and implement fully.”

Almost half of the remaining games from the English Premier League will be broadcast for free, including on the BBC for the first time in the competition’s history.