BT finally ends free TNT Sports TV bundle with UK broadband plans
Telecoms giant BT has in recent weeks been gradually notifying their existing UK home broadband customers, specifically those with legacy packages that once came bundled with the streaming TNT Sports Pack add-on for free (formerly BTSport), that they’ll need to start paying for the add-on from 16th October 2026. Some customers never even used it.
The promotion originally ran quite a few years ago, back when the service was originally known as BTSport, and it continued when that moved to Discovery+, became TNT Sports and then moved to HBO Max. Some customers never even used it, but others did and had perhaps expected the feature to continue even after BT retreated from its prior focus on premium TV sports.
Today the situation is rather different. TNT Sports on HBO Max costs £25 a month when purchased with a BT broadband package. If you want access to TNT Sports on HBO Max without broadband, then you can usually buy TNT Sports on HBO Max, contract free, for £30.99 a month (standard standalone streaming and app subscription). But you can get it for £25.99 a month on a 12-month Saver Plan.
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However, despite the change, BT are offering customers with the free add-on the ability to continue receiving TNT Sports at a reduced price of £15 per month on a 30-day rolling contract. Plenty of posts about this can be found on BT’s Community Forum (here and here), which also appears to suggest that not all of BT’s support staff had the correct information. Some agents initially denied that such an email had been sent, leading users to initially suspect it might be a scam (it isn’t).
Copy of BT’s Customer Email
CHANGES TO YOUR TNT SPORTS PACK
Hi [Redacted Name],
The promotion on your TNT Sports Pack App add-on has come to an end, so we’re updating your price.
You’ll pay £15 a month rather than our standard price of £25 a month, a price only available to our valued existing customers.
That’s £10.99 less than buying TNT Sports direct through HBO Max.
Your TNT Sports Pack price will increase to
£25£15 a month from 16 October 2026. 30-day rolling contract.Your bill might say your service has changed. This is only because the price has changed. Everything else will stay the same.
Naturally many of those impacted by this change are not best pleased. “Been with BT for decades, when did this supposed promotion begin? Why was no notice of a forthcoming change given when I renewed in January? Conned,” said one disgruntled subscriber, while another expressed: “I am definitely not paying for TNT Sport as it is very much the poor relation of Sky and not worth £5 never mind £15 a month.”
The reality is that if you do make a lot of use of TNT Sports then £15 a month, while no longer free, is still a pretty good price more broadly. The question will thus be whether you can switch to a cheaper ISP and save money, while still taking TNT Sports separately from BT. The answer to that will vary by package choice and location, so you’ll have to do your research. Credits to CordBusters for spotting this first.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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TNT has the reputation of being —- for a reason. As one of the forum commenters said in the article: “its not worth £5 a month, let alone £15, £30 or higher”. Their production quality is awful, constant errors and limited premium quality. Sky can put up a studio and punditry for all their events, including ones like F1, whereas TNT just love cutting back the coverage of everything to the bare bones while still demanding an excessive monthly charge for it. Snooker is a great example of coverage which is noticeably poorer today on TNT compared to 5 years ago, and its all because of the shitty paywall.
People only subscribe for the Champions League and the Premier League games that Sky don’t have. The rest is just cheap filler as far as TNT Sports are concerned. Losing the Champions League to Paramount+ is going to hit them hard, I suspect.
I already given up on Snooker when they left Eurosport UK. Never bother with rip off TNT Sports on his own – no way paying it. WSA Play are pretty useless cos they do block and restrict broadcasters in UK as what the point of subscription to it as they now available via App on TV.
I only watch the Snooker via BBC (for UK Championship, The Masters and The World Championship) but the real problem is have to pay TV License to watch live snooker via BBC.
Money, Money, Money – pure greed!
@john_r agreed. TNT Sports is a shadow of itself regarding the amount of football content it once broadcast. Scottish SPFL, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1 have all gone in the last few years. Back in the BT Sport days they used to have a dedicated BT Sport Europe channel for other leagues, such as Dutch football.
It’s also not just the Champions League they lost rights to. They lost out on the Europa League and Conference League to Sky Sports.
After this season, they are going to be in big trouble. One caveat though might be since Skydance have now acquired WBD (TNT Sports parent company), might they keep the Champions League on TNT Sports, to avoid losing a shedload of subscribers? I guess we won’t have long to find out.
They got it for long enough, it is these add ons that put the price up for people that wants just broadband.
Interesting timing since the WBD-Paramount merger is supposed to conclude today. As others have said, BT put a lot more effort and polish into the presentation than WBD did. Among the first acts of the “joint venture” was for WBD to shut down the facilities and studios that BT had built.
That said I really do wonder if it was at all worth it for BT to go into the sports biz, what would that cash have done if they’d gone into FTTP a few years earlier than they did?
Reading your comment I now realise that Paramount, as of today, essentially own TNT sports. I wonder if this means that the Champions League will end up on TNT Sports anyway. I don’t see why they would want to devalue their principle UK sports channel by putting it on Paramount+.