Sky Sports will let customers pause their subscription for free to stop fans shelling out on coronavirus-hit events

SKY SPORTS are giving customers the chance to pause their subscriptions for free to save them shelling out for cancelled events.

The coronavirus outbreak has seen the vast majority of sporting fixtures postponed or scrapped entirely.

Read our Coronavirus in Sport live blog for the latest news, updates and cancellations

And with it, many fans who fork out each month to watch Sky Sports’ coverage put pressure on the broadcaster to give them some leniency when it came to their monthly tariff.

Now Sky have relented by offering their consumers to put a temporary stop on their TV deal to get rid of the currently-needless sports package.

The company said: “While we expect that many of the recently postponed sports events will eventually go ahead, if you wish to pause your sports subscription in the meantime you will not be charged a fee to do so or be held to any notice period.

“Meanwhile we continue to provide high quality content across all of our 11 sports channels.”

A large part of Sky Sports’ coverage centres around their live Premier League action as well as the EFL, Scottish football, rugby league, Formula 1, cricket and golf.

But with football in England suspended until at least April 3 and the majority of other major sporting fixtures either postponed or completely scrapped, a lot of customers were understandably unwilling to carry on paying for the channels.

However, Sky are refusing to allow customers to do so via their website – and insist they must call instead.

The company added: “We are sorry that you are currently unable to pause your Sky Sports subscription online.”

And that led many fans to vent their frustration as for many it meant long queue times as they sat on the phone trying to speak to an agent.

One tweeted: “Could you please tell me why only some customers are receiving emails from you saying their sky sports subscription will be paused but others have not had that email?

“I was on the phone waiting for 25mins to pause my subscription but to get through and be cut off.”

Another said: “So tried pausing our Sky Sports subscription. Can’t do it online. Over an hour wait now on phone…”

And a final user wrote: “Hi Sky, tried to cancel my SS subscription today. Can only do it by phone call. Minimum 1 hour wait.

“Surely subscribers should be able to do this online, especially with all that’s going on with #coronavirusuk . Do the decent thing.”