Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
NBC-affiliated streaming service Peacock announced today that it will be soon rolling out its biggest price hike ever, with both its ad-supported and ad-free tiers jumping up $3, to $10.99 and $16.99 a month, respectively. Now, to be fair, that second number is going to be academic for a lot of people, since most Peacock subscribers—80 percent, apparently—just suck up the commercials. But it’s still a big monthly bump, possibly taking Peacock from “Eh, it’s eight bucks to watch Poker Face, why not?” into a more irksome price point for a lot of consumers. And it’s at least partially the fault of sports. (We’ve been saying it for years: They’re a problem!)
See, NBCUniversal has been pushing really hard over the last few years to make Peacock a destination for sports streaming. That includes brokering a lot of deals with the leagues, notably one that’ll go into effect this October to make Peacock the streaming home of the NBA—at a price tag of $2.45 billion a year. (That’s, um, a lot of 30-second paper towel commercials.) According to a report from Vulture on the hikes, that’s at least partially how Peacock is justifying its price increases: They’re not really competing with Hulu, or Netflix, or any of the other million ways we’re slowly re-building cable TV from first principles. They’re fighting it out with Disney’s ongoing efforts to get the sports streaming market, which—after its plans for a joint-owned mega-sports streamer called Venu imploded last year—seems to now be arriving as a standalone ESPN streaming service that’s likely to cost $29.99 a month. What’s 11 bucks and some commercials in comparison to that?
And if you were really married to that old $7.99 price tag, don’t worry, Peacock’s got you covered: The company is apparently rolling out an ad-supported “Peacock Select” pricing tier at that level that cuts out all the sports. And the Peacock Originals. And any of the Universal movies that end up on the service. So, yeah, it’s basically just a slightly more convenient way to watch existing NBC and Bravo shows (and Days Of Our Lives), but at least it’s… as expensive as the full ad-supported version of Peacock used to be. What a deal!
Peacock’s price hikes go into effect next week.
