One of the cheapest live TV streaming services gets a bit pricier this month after Dish announced price hikes for its Sling TV service. The price increase, which will take effect on Monday, December 23, will raise the price of the basic Sling TV Blue and Sling TV Orange packages to €30 per month from their previous price of €25 per month. (Sling TV Blue, remember, includes Fox, NBC, and sports options, while Sling TV Orange includes Disney and ESPN.) The package that combines the two services that were previously available for €40 will now be €45 per month under the new pricing structure, which will begin to appear on customer bills in January. To offset the price increase, Sling TV says it will add Fox News and MSNBC as well as CNN's HLN to both plans, as well as 10 hours of free cloud DVR service that will now be available to every subscriber.
A bad year for live TV streaming
While this is disappointing news for Sling TV subscribers, it's about the same for the course of live TV streaming services right now, most other live TV streaming services like Hulu and YouTube. TV have raised prices this year or, in the case of PlayStation Vue, have announced that they are closing for good. So why is everyone jacking up the prices? The cost of entering into deals with multiple stakeholders like Fox/Disney, Viacom, and NBCUniversal has probably increased in the last year now that they are all trying to create their own services. (Of the three major players mentioned above, Disney just launched its own streaming service called Disney Plus, Viacom owns Pluto TV, and NBCUniversal will likely launch its cord-cutting service, Peacock, early next year.) Hopefully, you'll get it. What we are seeing right now is the painful growth of live TV services that will come before the next big growth in 2020, although the exact fate of live TV services at this point is already a guess. by variety