How much does it cost to watch live football on TV in the UK?

Cameron Smith

• 21 Nov 2025 15:28 GMT
• 5 min read

Analysis

The cost of watching live football in the United Kingdom is constantly on the rise and fans are required to fork out a hefty monthly fee in order to view the sport on TV.

Millions of supporters have turned to watching football on illegal streaming devices due to the rising costs of subscriptions, while the price is set to increase even further following news that Paramount+ will be the new home of the Champions League from 2027/28 onwards.

An additional subscription will be needed to view Europe’s elite club competition and many fans may well be priced out of adding Paramount+ to their monthly bill.

But, how much does it currently cost to watch live football in the UK?

How much does it cost to watch football on TV in the UK?

In order to consume any live football legally, fans in the UK must pay a TV license fee of £14.50 per month, or £174.50 per year, which also provides access to several live fixtures every week on the BBC, most notably the FA Cup.

The fine for watching live TV without a TV license in the UK is a maximum of £1,000.

Sky Sports are the standout broadcaster for live football in the UK, showing 215 matches of Premier League football across the 2025-26 season, in addition to the Championship, League One, League Two, Scottish Premiership, Carabao Cup, Women’s Super League and even a weekly Bundesliga game.

Meanwhile, 52 Premier League matches will be shown on TNT Sports throughout 2025-26, while the broadcaster also has the rights for the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League, in addition to showing FA Cup matches.

TNT Sports costs £30.99 per month, although fans will also need to have a subscription to Prime Video (£8.99 per month) in order to watch every Champions League match as the best fixture each Tuesday is shown on the Amazon subscription service.

In total, the TV license fee, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Prime Video cost a combined £89.48 per month, and that is without taking into account any live matches that supporters may want to watch in person.

However, if football fans in the UK want to watch the remainder of Europe’s top five leagues, additional money will be needed.

DAZN have the rights to televise all 380 matches in the Serie A this season and it costs £24.99 for their monthly flex plan.

Meanwhile, a subscription to Premier Sports (£10.99 per month) and Disney+ (£5.99 per month) is needed to watch every La Liga match. Premier Sports hold the rights to more than 340 live games, although Disney+ exclusively broadcast the ‘primetime’ Saturday night fixture every week.

For Ligue 1, fans in the UK must purchase a Ligue 1+ pass, which costs £9.99 per month and provides access for all matches in the French top flight, with the exception of games during the 3pm TV blackout.

Finally, Bundesliga matches are split across five broadcasters in the UK this season, with Prime Video, Sky Sports, the BBC and YouTube channels ‘The Overlap’ and ‘That’s Football’ all showing German top flight matches. The games on YouTube are free-to-air, while the rest of the subscriptions have already been accounted for.

So, if UK football fans want to legally watch the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, Scottish Premiership, Women’s Super League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Champions League, Europa League, Europa Conference League and the rest of Europe’s top five leagues, it will cost a whopping £141.44 per month.

However, that figure will rise further to a minimum monthly cost of £146.43 when Paramount+ begin their coverage of the Champions League in 2027.

A basic plan (with ads) for Paramount+ currently costs £4.99 per month, although it’s feasible to imagine that will increase fairly substantially ahead of their Champions League coverage, meaning the overall monthly cost of watching football in the UK may even surpass £146.43 by the time the 2027/28 season begins.

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