Peacock is the latest streaming platform to get a price hike, and the first for the NBCUniversal service since launching in summer 2020.
The studio said existing Peacock subscribers will see the price for the Premium service rise by $1 a month to $5.99, starting on August 17. And the Premium Plus tier — which offers viewers mostly no ads, episode downloads and live, local NBC channels — will increase by $2 monthly to $11.99.
The price hike, which will also impact new customers, follows Peacock subscriber figures hitting nearly 22 million in the first three months of 2023, up 60 percent year-over-year. NBCUniversal said the price change will allow “Peacock to continue to invest in the best user experience and the highest-quality content while remaining competitive in the marketplace.”
The studio noted that, since its launch, Peacock has added over 80,000 hours of content, including exclusive movies from Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, new NBC and Bravo episodes launching the day after going to air on linear channels, streaming channels from Hallmark and Reelz, and daily morning news from CNBC and MSNBC.
Against that content offering, NBCUniversal has seen Peacock’s start-up losses continue amid a recent industrywide focus on efforts to boost profitability. Even with the price change, NBCUniversal has forecast 2023 will represent peak losses — about $3 billion — for Peacock as the Comcast division transitions to streaming.
Paramount Global also raised the monthly subscription price for its rebranded streaming service Paramount+ with Showtime in the third quarter of 2023 after Paramount+ posted strong subscriber gains thanks to such hit content as Top Gun: Maverick. The cost of the advertising-free premium streaming plan rose from $9.99 per month for Paramount+ to $11.99 for Paramount+ with Showtime.
And Warner Bros. Discovery unveiled a monthly price hike for Max to $15.99 per month. That followed services such as Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video raising their monthly prices by $2 to $3, signaling the end of a honeymoon period when entertainment companies, fully aware of the competitive streaming landscape in front of them, were willing to price their streamers low to attract subscribers.
