Sky Show is making changes to its streaming plans. The existing offers, Cinema (9.90 francs per month), Entertainment (14.90 francs per month), and Entertainment & Cinema (19.90 francs per month) are being phased out completely and three new plans are being introduced. For existing customers, the change will result in a price hike of up to 20 percent.
From May 27, 2024, Sky Show will offer these new plans:
- Sky Show Light: The cheapest Sky Show subscription includes advertising breaks. The plan costs 12.90 francs per month, or 10.90 francs per month with the customer loyalty discount.
- Sky Show Standard: This plan costs 17.90 francs per month, or 15.90 francs per month with the customer loyalty discount.
- Sky Show Premium: This plan costs 24.90 francs per month and offers a larger amount of content and better image and sound quality. The plan costs 20.90 francs per month with the customer loyalty discount.
What are the differences between the Sky Show plans?
The plan structure is relatively complex. The subscriptions differ from each other with regards to advertising, the video content available, and the image and sound quality, the number of devices that can stream simultaneously, and offline usability. You can find the details in Table 1.
Table 1: Overview of Sky Show plans
| |
Sky Show Light |
Sky Show Standard |
Sky Show Premium |
| Monthly fee |
CHF 12.90 |
CHF 17.90 |
CHF 24.90 |
| Monthly fee with loyalty discount |
CHF 10.90 |
CHF 15.90 |
CHF 20.90 |
| Video content |
| Series |
|
|
|
| TV movies |
|
|
|
| Documentaries |
|
|
|
| Premium TV channels |
|
|
|
| Hollywood Blockbusters |
|
|
|
| Sky Cinema movies |
|
|
|
| Video quality |
| Highest image quality |
720p (HD ready) |
1080p (Full-HD) |
UHD (4K) |
| Sound quality |
Stereo |
Stereo |
Dolby 5.1 |
| Other features |
| Simultaneous streams |
1 |
2 |
4 |
| Number of devices that can use downloads and offline viewing |
0 |
2 |
10 |
What will happen to the existing plans?
From May 27, 2024, existing customers will – depending on which plan they have – either be migrated to one of the new plans, or keep their existing plan.
- Cinema: If you already have the Cinema plan, you will keep that plan, but you will pay 10.90 francs per month instead of the current 9.90 francs per month. That is a 10-percent price increase. The Cinema plan will no longer be available to new customers. From May 27, 2024, the Cinema plan’s video content will only be available in the Sky Show Premium plan.
- Entertainment: Existing Entertainment plan subscribers will be transferred to the new Sky Show Standard plan. The new Standard plan costs 17.90 francs per month – three francs more than the 14.90 charged for the phased-out Entertainment plan. That is a price increase of 20 percent.
- Entertainment & Cinema: If you are subscribed to the Entertainment & Cinema plan, you will be migrated to the new Sky Show Premium plan. They will pay 20.90 francs per month for the new plan – one franc more than the 19.90 francs charged for the old plan. That is a 5-percent price increase.
Existing customers who are migrated to the new Sky Show Standard or Sky Show Premium plans automatically receive a customer loyalty discount.
Prices for new customers
Depending on which plan you want, you may pay a lot more if you subscribe after May 26, 2024. The reason is that Sky is changing its offers.
- Feature films: If you are primarily interested in feature films (what Sky describes as Hollywood Blockbusters) and Sky Cinema movies, you will have to pay much more than you did previously. Instead of the 9.90-franc monthly fee charged for the current Cinema plan, you will have to pay 24.90 francs for the new Premium plan. That is a price increase of 152 percent. But for the additional money, you get a plan with a lot of additional content like series and documentaries.
- Video quality: If having the best possible image quality (4K) and sound quality (Dolby 5.1) is important to you, then the Sky Show Premium plan for 24.90 francs per month is your only option. The existing Entertainment plan costs 14.90 for new customers, but includes less video content. The price difference compared to the new Premium plan is 10 francs, or 67 percent.
What is the customer loyalty price?
Your subscription becomes cheaper after you have kept your plan for six months. The discount off the monthly fee is either two or four francs, depending on which plan you have.
Existing customers who are migrated to the new plans get the customer loyalty discount right from the start, which softens the price hike for new customers.
Conclusion by telecom expert Ralf Beyeler
The price hikes just keep coming. Sky Show’s move to raise its prices follows in the footsteps of Disney Plus, Apple TV, and Netflix. The price increases are substantially higher than the general inflation rate in Switzerland.
There are two other trends that are also interesting to observe.
The first: for many years, nearly all streaming services offered all customers the same image and sound quality, regardless of their plan. Netflix was the only exception: The streaming giant already used image quality as a differentiator between its plans when it launched in Switzerland in September 2014. Since last autumn, Disney Plus has also used different image resolutions for its different plans. Now Sky Show is adopting this system as well.
The second: Offers with advertising are on the rise. Disney Plus introduced a plan with advertising breaks to the Swiss market last year. Now Sky Show is following suit. But Sky Show stresses that it only shows advertisements before the start of a video, so that series and movies are not interrupted by advertising breaks. Netflix has already introduced plans with advertising breaks in some countries, but there are no known plans for applying this model in Switzerland too.
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