AT&T’s DirecTV Now has been going hard after cord-cutting millennials in an increasingly crowded streaming TV marketplace and announced a new sweetener Friday, offering a free month of the service’s basic plan for anyone who buys a cable box replacement at Best Buy.
Starting Sunday, Best Buy customers who pick up one of several applicable streaming devices either online or in-store, including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku Premiere and Google Chromecast, will receive one free month of DirecTV Now’s “Live a Little” package, which usually costs $35 a month.
“Live a Little,” the cheapest offering from AT&T’s internet TV service, has more than 60 channels, including ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, CNN, TNT, Fox News, Bravo and HGTV. It also includes a video on demand library that now streams more than 20,000 titles.
DirecTV Now launched in November and quickly cleared 200,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but its growth has slowed down as new entrants like Hulu Live TV and Google’s YouTube TV hit the scene, as well as some untimely technical issues and a rollback of marketing. DirecTV Now introduced support for popular Roku devices in May, and unveiled a Roku-related promotion last week with the hopes of reigniting growth, giving consumers who prepay for two months of any DirecTV package a free Roku Premiere. That promotion is available to consumers in AT&T retail stores across the country starting Friday.
In addition to “Live a Little,” DirecTV Now offers three higher tiers: “Just Right,” with more than 80 channels and a $50 a month price tag, “Go Big,” which has over 100 channels and costs $60 a month, and “Gotta Have It,” a 120-plus channel package that costs $70 a month. HBO and Cinemax can be added for a monthly rate of $5 each, while Starz costs another $8 a month.