Sky Sports customers were on Tuesday night given permission to “pause” their subscription during the coronavirus crisis after the company agreed to stop billing pubs and clubs until a live sport schedule returned. The move immediately piled pressure on BT to follow suit for its own sports channel subscribers after it announced a two-week suspension of charges for its commercial customers.
While not giving an automatic rebate for armchair sports channel subscribers, Sky offered them the choice of temporarily pausing the service.
Sky had initially said that customers would have to pay a hefty penalty if they wanted to cancel their subscriptions before the contract had ended.
A message on Sky's website read: “While we expect that many of the recently postponed sports events will eventually go ahead, if you wish to pause your sports subscription in the meantime you will not be charged a fee to do so or be held to any notice period. Meanwhile we continue to provide high quality content across all of our 11 sports channels.
Sky said, “We are sorry that you are currently unable to pause your Sky Sports subscription online. Instead, people who want to suspend their payments will need to call the company directly, on 0800 151 2747."