Customers of Sky’s (Comcast / Sky Broadband) TV service will be pleased to know that the Pay TV and broadband ISP giant have officially agreed to a new multi-year deal, which will make Disney+ content available for purchase in the UK and Ireland on Sky Q (this will then be followed by NOW TV in the “coming months“).
As a result of this Sky’s TV customers will be able to watch new shows like The Mandalorian, High School Musical; The Musical, The Series; The World According to Jeff Goldblum and more. Various other movies and TV shows from the Star Wars and Marvel universes are also due to air on Disney+ in the future.
The deal is also said to include the “first-pay window for 20th Century titles“, which means that Sky Cinema customers will continue to enjoy access to the latest movie blockbusters, like Le Mans ’66 and Terminator: Dark Fate.
Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s Group CEO, said:
“We’ve built a strong partnership with Disney over three decades and we’re pleased that our customers in the UK and Ireland can continue to enjoy their world-class content – all in one place on Sky Q. This is a great start to what is set to be another stellar year for Sky – in 2020 we’ll launch new channels and genres, start building Sky Studios Elstree and we’ve got brilliant new and returning originals coming too.”
The move to add Disney+ has been expected, although Sky has yet to reveal how they’ll handle billing and charges for related content. The independent Disney+ streaming platform is otherwise due to go live from 24th March 2020 and early subscribers who go direct will pay just £49 for the first year of access (£5.99 is the normal monthly price).
One problem with all of this is that there are now so many TV and movie streaming services available (e.g. NOW TV, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, Disney+, BritBox etc.) that the market has become quite fragmented, which could encourage a resurgence of internet piracy.
I think the hope is that the per month figure will be low enough that you “forget”. Depends how fiscally responsible you are and how often you do your accounts if at all.
I’m going to take a £50 punt on disney+. Plenty of time to prove its worth.
I did the same as you. There’s a lot of audio described content on there. It’ll be interesting to see how Sky themselves market it.
Yawn, another streaming service and yet another cost to consumers.
Getting a bit too much now
I must admit as I’ve no interest in this service I’ve not paid much attention to it. But from the adverts I’ve seen on ITV isn’t it something like £4.99 a month ..?
Standard via Disney is £59.99 per year, £49.99 for the first year if you were to pre-order before 23rd. Not sure what the Sky price will be
I just got a free year of Apple v + with my IPad – I’ve got to say it’s rubbish so don’t really count that as competition. I also got a year of NowTV and then got Sky Q so I had a refund.
The others I have not tried but Disney movies channel is enough for my children and we get that with the package.
This is good for Sky as none of the competition such as Virgin Media and BT TV offers this (yet).
I guess this will be a future addition to the Ultimate On Demand pack.
This makes me laugh.
Oh wow the privilege to pay for another monthly service on top of what i’m paying sky. All you have to do is click one button and disney+ is there!
When I read the title I was half expecting (perhaps naively) that Sky would be bundling Disney+ with maybe their top bundle for free.
Look everyone Sky are giving you first dibs to pay for something more a month – you lucky people!!
This deal appears to have also allowed Simpsons to go onto Disney + which it didn’t look like was going to happen before because of Sky deal on simpsons but guess that was one of the conditions of this Disney+/Sky deal or is that me being cynical ?