According to The Hollywood Reporter, Discovery+, run by Warner Bros. Discovery, has raised the prices of their ad-free tier on the streaming platform. This raise in price will be exactly $2 more every month, meaning it will now be $8.99 compared to the previous $6.99 every month. However, the ad tier price will remain unchanged at $4.99.
The changes will be effective starting October 3rd. This means that consumers of Discovery+ can expect these changes to begin immediately.
This price increase will not just impact America. It will also affect Canada, with Canadian prices being raised to $8.99 for the ad-free tier and $5.99 for the free tier. It is the first time prices have gone up in both countries since the streaming service launched in 2021.
The Hollywood Reporter highlighted that Discovery+ is not the first company to do this. In fact, it is a business strategy used by many other companies in order to make the business more profitable. Another company to do this price raise was Disney+, which was done back in August.
Warner Bros. Discovery also did the same thing with the platform Max earlier this year. The strategy appears to be growing in popularity among businesses.
Also stated by The Hollywood Reporter, is the fact that ad-tiers tend to provide better revenue for companies. This could be what contributes to decisions such as raising prices for ad-free tiers.
The reason that ad-tiers have more success is because of not only the lower prices, but also the fact that advertisers pay to have their ads displayed. Ad-free tiers don’t have this innate privelage, so companies will do whatever needs to be done to bring in more income.
The exact results of this price raise and how consumers will be affected have yet to be documented, however, it does not seem that this trend among companies is slowing down.