TV provider Dish has announced that it will be raising the price of its internet TV service Sling TV to $30 per month for both its Blue and Orange subscription packages. This represents a 20% increase in price from the original subscription plan for Sling.
The price change takes effect today, December 23rd, and will be reflected in Sling TV subscribers’ next billing statements after January of 2020. Reports indicate that the price increase is likely caused by the recent addition of Fox News to Sling TV’s lineup, as well as MSNBC and CNN’s HLN. Fox Corporation president of operations and distribution Michael Biard gave statement on the recent deal with Sling TV. “We are pleased that our leading news and business networks are now available to Sling subscribers.”
While Biard gave no comment on the price increase of Sling TV, Dish indicated in their statement that content providers were the primary cause of the price increase. “Sling doesn’t own the networks you watch,” explained EVP and group president of Sling TV Warren Schlichting. “We have to pay programmers for their channels so that we can provide them to you, and the price of programming has been going up. Unfortunately, we have to share those rising prices with you, so we can continue to provide you with the same great experience you’ve come to expect from Sling.”
The Sling TV price increase comes just a few weeks after Hulu announced that they would also be increasing their subscription prices. The Hulu price increase was comparable to the Sling TV increase at about a 22% price jump from 45 dollars to 55 dollars for the standard subscription. In their press statement, Hulu acknowledged that “price changes are never easy to stomach, and we know that many people don’t watch live television year-round, so we’ve made it easy for Hulu subscribers to switch back and forth between our plans to best suit their needs.” Both of these price increases from Hulu and Sling may indicate the beginnings of an overall price increase for streaming television, though the extent of this trend is still unclear.