DirecTV Stream, the live streaming companion of the company's satellite TV service, has debuted its first free trial, which will give new subscribers five days to check out the service.
The new feature, which is available for customers who sign up online, arrives ahead of lots of key live sports content like the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Weekend along with the ongoing 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“We’re telling customers to just try the product. We know they’ll love it,” said GW Shaw, senior vice president of product at DirecTV, who added that his company will launch a small amount of marketing around the free trial.
As to why DirecTV Stream is just now adding a free trial and why it's five days, Shaw said his company looked at customer viewing habits and found five days to be a “sweet spot” in terms of allowing customers to test the service.
“I think that we’ll learn a lot and if the customers like it, and if it performs as we expect, I think it will be permanent,” he said.
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Adding a free trial to DirecTV Stream puts the service in line with competitors like Sling TV, fuboTV, Philo and YouTube TV, all of which offer free trials ranging from three days to two weeks. Shaw said that DirecTV Stream may possibly experiment with the length of the free trial.
Over the past few months since DirecTV was spun off from AT&T, the service has launched new features including unlimited simultaneous streams on unlimited screens, unlimited cloud DVR, different premiums included with different packages that customers can opt into, and a “Help me choose my package” quiz through the website.
DirecTV Stream’s streaming device now includes a sports-focused curation feature that helps users keep track of regional and national content. Shaw said the service will keep iterating on features and that it could extend its sports curation to other genres of entertainment.
“There are people who are just as excited about reality TV or cooking. We can really personalize the experience for those customers,” he said. “We’re really continuing to focus on how we can drive incremental value for our customers.”