Another day, another price increase for a streaming service. On Friday, Variety reported that another price hike is incoming for ESPN Plus. Disney plans to raise the monthly subscription fee on its sports-centric streaming service by $3 on August 23rd, 2022. The new price will be $9.99 a month, up from the current rate of $6.99 a month.
In addition to increasing the monthly rate, Disney also plans to bump up the price of annual subscriptions. Paying for a full year of ESPN Plus upfront will now cost you $99.99, which is a whopping $30 more than the current rate of $69.99 a year.
ESPN Plus gets its third price hike in two years
Variety says that Disney will start informing users about the ESPN Plus price hike next week. Thankfully, the price of the Disney Bundle — which includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus for $13.99 a month — will stay the same. Disney also doesn’t plan to adjust the pricing for its UFC pay-per-view events on ESPN for the time being.
This 43% increase for the ESPN Plus monthly subscription price comes exactly one year after the last one. Last July, Disney increased the price of the streaming service by $1 from $5.99 to $6.99. This happened four months after Disney raised the price of annual subscriptions from $49.99 to $59.99. That’s three price hikes in about sixteen months.
As Variety notes, Disney has made it abundantly clear that price hikes aren’t going away any time soon. Here’s what CEO Bob Chapek told investors in May:
As we increase our content investment, we believe that that’s going to give us the ability to adjust our price.
Speaking of price hikes, it’s been well over a year since Disney Plus jumped from $6.99 to $7.99 a month. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the price of Disney Plus go up before the end of the year, but Disney has yet to make any official announcements.
More Disney Plus coverage: For more Disney Plus news, check out our coverage of the Disney Plus movies and series to watch this month.
