YouTube said it would raise the monthly cost of its TV streaming service to $82.99, up from $72.99 starting Jan. 13. The Alphabet said the increase was due to the rising cost of content.
“We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we realize this has an impact on our members,” YouTube said in an email to subscribers.
The Wall Street Journal reports when YouTube TV made its debut in 2017, the company charged roughly $35 a month for the service. YouTube TV offers livestreaming of local TV networks and access to networks like ESPN, CNN and TNT. It last increased its rate in March 2023.
Over the past decade, millions U.S. households have given up on cable, abandoning their traditional pay-TV plan. Viewers grew tired of traditional cable packages with numerous channels they never watched and were drawn to cheaper streaming options. But streaming services have been raising prices on a regular basis, eating into the savings many cord-cutters were seeking by giving up cable.
Disney raised subscription costs in August for its ad-supported and ad-free versions of Disney+ streaming service by $2 to $9.99 and $15.99, respectively. It also increased monthly costs for Hulu. Both the ad-supported and ad-free versions of Hulu + Live TV, Disney’s streaming version of the cable bundle, rose $6 a month, to $82.99 and $95.99 respectively.
Cyclical price increases for streaming services have become a trademark of the industry. The average cost of watching a major ad-free streaming service is going up by nearly 25% in about a year, according to a 2023 Wall Street Journal analysis. Entertainment companies are hoping customers will either pay the new prices or switch to their cheaper and more lucrative ad-supported plans.
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