Discovery+ TV Streaming Content Coming to Vodafone UK Mobile

Customers of telecoms giant Vodafone UK look set to benefit from a new long-term, multi-platform agreement with the Discovery TV channel in Europe, which among other things will see the new video streaming service – Discovery+ (Discovery Plus) – being made available to mobile customers.

The new partnership is said to cover Vodafone’s TV, broadband and mobile customers in Germany, the UK (mobile only), Turkey (mobile only), Italy, Spain, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland and Iceland. Sadly, the operator is not extending this to their UK fixed broadband base, which seems like a missed opportunity but then they’ve generally tended to avoid doing anything Pay TV related with that side of things.

At present new customers tend to pay from £4.99 per month to access Discovery+ online (or £29.99 for the first year, then £49.99 thereafter) and our suspicion is that Vodafone UK will at some point bundle access to this into their 4G and 5G based mobile plans – it’s not uncommon for them to offer a free introductory period of service (often lasting several months).

Discovery’s portfolio of brands includes the Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, MotorTrend, Animal Planet, and Science Channel, as well as the OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in the U.S.

Ahmed Essam, Vodafone’s Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer, said:

“I am extremely pleased to have made this agreement with Discovery, which extends our existing partnership and perfectly demonstrates Vodafone’s positioning as one of Europe’s leading video content platforms. Discovery will be a key part of our entertainment offer, providing a rich choice of content that will enhance Vodafone’s provision of a superior customer experience across its high-quality TV and flexible streaming services”.

The rollout of this is expected to take place gradually between 2021 and 2022, thus we don’t yet have a solid UK launch date. We should add that UK customers of Sky Q‘s (Sky Broadband) TV service can already access Discovery+ for 12 months at no extra cost. Something similar from Vodafone, but for mobile, seems highly likely.