Streaming service Fubo TV says it will now charge a regional sports fee for customers who subscribe to a plan that offers one or more of those channels.
The fee will be decided based on the number of regional sports channels a customer receives in their plan, and will be added to the cost of a subscription, rather than being included in the price.
In a note to customers on the Fubo TV website, the company says it will charge subscribers $11 a month when their package includes one regional sports channel or $14 a month if their plan has two or more channels.
The move comes after Fubo TV announced on Friday that it would hike the cost of its base subscription tier to $75 a month for new customers. If their plan includes one or more regional sports channel, the added fee will bring the overall cost of the plan anywhere from $86 a month to $89 a month.
“In order to continue bringing you the best in sports programming, if you subscribe to Fubo TV and receive one or more regional sports networks, you are subject to a regional sports fee,” Fubo TV told customers this week. There is no way to opt-out of the networks in order to avoid the fee, the company said, but subscribers who live in an area where Fubo TV doesn’t offer a regional sports channel won’t be charged the added fee.
Fubo TV currently offers the following regional sports networks:
- Altitude Sports
- AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh
- AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain
- AT&T SportsNet Southwest
- Bally Sports Arizona
- Bally Sports Detroit
- Bally Sports Florida
- Bally Sports Great Lakes
- Bally Sports Indiana
- Bally Sports Kansas City
- Bally Sports Midwest
- Bally Sports New Orleans
- Bally Sports North
- Bally Sports Ohio
- Bally Sports Oklahoma
- Bally Sports San Diego
- Bally Sports SoCal
- Bally Sports South
- Bally Sports Southeast
- Bally Sports Southwest
- Bally Sports Sun
- Bally Sports West
- Bally Sports Wisconsin
- Marquee Sports Network
- MSG and MSG+
- NBC Sports Bay Area
- NBC Sports Boston
- NBC Sports California
- NBC Sports Chicago
- NBC Sports Philadelphia
- NBC Sports Washington
- NESN (New England Sports Network
- Root Sports Northwest
- SNY (SportsNet New York)
The regional sports fee doesn’t affect customers who receive the national feed of Marquee Sports Network, assuming they don’t also receive another regional sports network in their plan. Customers can see which regional sports channels are included in their plan, if any, by looking up their zip code on this webpage.
The decision to charge customers a regional sports fee on top of their base subscription plan makes Fubo TV one of the more-expensive streaming options on the market, and might make it more expensive than a basic cable package in some areas.
At least for now, customers who have Fubo TV have a few other options to consider if they want streaming access to their local regional sports channel without any separate fees to consider, including YouTube TV ($65 a month), Hulu with Live TV ($60 a month) and DirecTV Stream (price depends on package). Other services, like Dish Network’s Sling TV ($40 a month) and Vidgo ($60 a month), carry national sports channels, but typically don’t offer regional sports networks.
In addition to the separate regional sports fee, Fubo TV this week decided to change the price of its base subscription package for new customers to $75 a month, a $5 increase from where it once stood. The cost of a higher tier of service, called Fubo TV Elite, also went up in price to $85 a month.
While the regional sports fee applies to all customers going forward, the price increases on the base programming packages only affect new customers who started a Fubo TV subscription on or after Friday, though the company has been known to temporarily “grandfather” in customers on lower-priced plans before eventually increasing fees on those subscribers.
The price increases come less than a week after Fubo TV said it would stop offering more than a dozen channels owned by AMC Networks, including AMC, IFC, BBC America, BBC World News, We TV and Sundance.
