There’s something a little surreal about writing this article on a site called Cord Busters.
For the best part of a decade, the whole point of this website – and the whole point of cord cutting in general – was to help people escape the grip of expensive, contract-heavy TV providers.
Sky, specifically, was often the villain of the piece. Long contracts with unclear terms, annual price rises that felt more like a shrug than an apology, and a bill that somehow always ended up higher than you expected. The advice was simple: cancel Sky, subscribe to Netflix, enjoy your freedom.
And for a while, that advice held up pretty well.
But something has shifted – and if we’re being honest about it, the streaming revolution that was supposed to liberate us has become its own kind of expensive.
The question of whether Sky is actually good value in 2026 deserves a proper look, without the reflexive suspicion that used to be – and still can be – entirely justified.
How We Got Here
Cast your mind back to the mid-2010s. Sky had almost everything worth watching. HBO shows on Sky Atlantic – Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The Wire, Succession.
Hollywood films on Sky Cinema. Live sport on Sky Sports. Plus dozens of entertainment channels. One bill, one remote, one place to go.
Then things started to fragment. Netflix grew into an actual alternative, not just a place for films you’d already seen. Amazon’s Prime Video arrived with its own originals.
Disney launched Disney+ and pulled its entire back catalogue – every Marvel film, every Star Wars title, every Pixar classic – behind its own paywall.
Paramount+ launched with its own slate. Apple TV+ appeared. HBO Max, available in dozens of other countries, finally launched in the UK in March 2026.
Suddenly, premium content wasn’t in one place anymore. It was scattered across six or seven different services, each charging separately, each with its own app and login and billing date.
