Virgin Media UK Claim – We’re the Cheapest for Premier League Footy

Cable ISP Virgin Media has boasted that their broadband, phone and TV bundle offers consumers the “cheapest prices and the most convenient way to watch all of the Premier League, UEFA Champions League and Europa League action in one place,” which they claim could save you £463 vs Sky (Sky Broadband) on a 12 month term.

The claim appears to be based on Virgin’s ‘Bigger bundle with Sports‘ package, which combines a 108Mbps (average speed) broadband service with unlimited data usage, 260+ TV channels, free weekend phone calls, a V6 TV box, Hub 3.0 router, included Amazon Echo Show 5 + Ring Video Doorbell (special offer) and access, among others, to the Sky Sports HD, BT Sport HD / 4K, ESPN and Eurosport 1 TV channels.

The bundle costs from £65 per month for the first 12 months of service and Virgin claims this is the “cheapest like-for-like deal – including broadband and landline calls – currently available for football fans” with average monthly costs for comparable packages being listed from Sky as £103.58, TalkTalk £95.66 and BT £86.68.

David Bouchier, Chief Digital Entertainment Officer at VM, said:

“Sports fans looking for their football fix next season need to look no further than Virgin Media. We’re, once again, bringing all of the football to Virgin TV in a single place with the cheapest UK packages all underpinned by our unrivalled ultrafast broadband.

With the addition of Amazon Prime Video to our TV platform, as well BT Sport’s Ultra HD 4K channel and Sky Sports, Virgin TV remains the home of televised football.”

However Virgin’s announcement, which states the total cost over 12 months is £780 (i.e. £65 x 12 months), neglects to mention that both a £35 one-off setup fee applies (delivery and other installation charges are also overlooked) and after the first 12 months is up their post-contract price shoots up faster than Usain Bolt to £110 per month (i.e. so it’s actually £815 for the first year and £1,320 for year two).

The Sky, BT and TalkTalk comparisons are all also on longer 18 or 24 month terms and there are other differences in terms of the wider bundled TV channel selections, as well as their included UK phone calls and broadband speeds (Virgin’s rivals all sell significantly slower FTTC connections). Suffice to say that doing comparisons of triple-play broadband, phone and TV bundles is never easy.

Judge for yourselves below by looking at their low-res comparison.

UPDATE 11:20am

Virgin has kindly provided a higher resolution version of their comparison, which we’ve added above (if you still see the low-res image above then you’ll need to clear your browser cache).