A TV giant has hiked the price of streaming for subscribers by 40%, leaving viewers to hand over $16.99 a month from now on.
It marks some of the biggest price increases streaming platforms have ever seen, and if you don’t want ads it’ll cost you even more.
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Peacock, the streaming service ran by Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, has raised prices for customers.
Starting from July 23, viewers will pay an extra $3 for both Peacock Premium and Premium Plus.
The first plan is ad-supported, meaning it comes with ad breaks like on cable TV, and will now cost $10.99 a month.
Premium Plus is ad-free and comes with access to live programming from NBC channels.
You can also download certain content for offline viewings.
The price of this plan will now cost you $16.99 per month.
An annual plan for Peacock Premium will now cost $109.99, up from $79.99, and Premium Plus now costs $169.99, instead of $139.99.
Some of Peacock‘s most popular TV content includes The Office, Law & Order: SVU, Yellowstone and Love Island.
The platform also has some of the most popular movie franchise collections, including Harry potter, Jurassic Park and John Wick.
Peacock is also testing out a new “Select” tier, which features current seasons of shows on NBC and Bravo and an assortment of library titles.
This will be priced at $7.99 a month and $79.99 for the year.
STREAMING RISE
But while this may seem like a lot, for Comcast, it may make sense given how many people use streaming versus cable.
According to Nielsen, as of June, 46% of Americans watch TV and movies over streaming platforms.
This is compared with roughly 23% on cable and 18% on legacy broadcast networks.
FREE STREAMING! Apps offer no-cost TV
Here are some of the most popular apps that offer at least some free streaming content…
- Tubi
- Amazon Freevee
- Plex TV
- The Roku Channel
- Sling Freestream (via Sling TV)
- FilmRise
- NewsON
- Fawesome TV
- Pluto TV
- Local Now
- Haystack News
- Red Bull TV
- Free Movies Plus
- PBS Kids Video
- PBS
- Xumo Play
The survey also showed that 72.4% of people watch ad-supported TV, and 27.6% pay to remove ads.
Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with research firm LightShed Partners, said: “Consumers are now spending more time each day streaming TV than watching broadcast and cable TV combined.”
But Peacock isn’t getting as much of the share as its competitors right now.
Out of that 46%, 12.8% of that is done on YouTube and 8.3% on Netflix.
Meanwhile, Peacock only takes up 1.5% of that share.
According to a securities filing, at the end of the first quarter of 2025, Peacock had 41 million paid subscribers.
This is up from 34 million in the same period last year.
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