Sports-focused streaming service Fubo is raising prices across most of its live television plans in the coming weeks to account for a new carriage deal with NBC Universal, the company told customers this week.
In an announcement sent via e-mail to affected subscribers and an updated page on the company’s support portal, Fubo said the price increase was a direct result of its renewed agreement with NBC Universal to restore channels like NBC, Telemundo and Bravo and onboard the new NBC Sports Network across its plans.
All subscribers to Fubo’s English-language packages will see their prices increase by $15 per month, unless they are on a promotional rate. The cost of Fubo’s lowest-price plan, called Fubo Essential, will increase to $89 per month, while its most-expensive tier, called Deluxe, will increase to $119 per month.
Subscribers who have their service billed on a quarterly basis will see the new prices take effect when their plan renews, unless they amend it before that renewal date.
The announcement comes a few weeks after Fubo ended a months-long stalemate with NBC Universal over carriage of its local broadcast stations, NBC affiliates and national networks. Fubo’s earlier agreement with NBC Universal expired last November, and the dispute lingered through key events like the Super Bowl and Winter Olympic Games.
During the dispute, Fubo pointed customers to Peacock as a solution for live sports and on-demand entertainment, with the company reselling subscriptions through an affiliate program. Each Peacock subscription sold by Fubo during the dispute earned the company a commission — which meant Fubo was making money from NBC Universal programming, even if it couldn’t carry NBC’s channels directly.
It seemed like the dispute would linger for quite some time, with Fubo executives telling investors that NBC Universal seemed uninterested in hammering out a new carriage deal until its contract with Hulu was about to expire. Fubo is an independent subsidiary business of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Hulu and offers a premium live TV product through that streaming service.
The conflict came to an end in June when Fubo announced a new deal with NBC Universal to restore its broadcast network, Bravo and national sports channels to the streaming service.
Fubo’s $15 price increase accounts for an $11 discount that the company gave its customers when NBC’s channels were not available, plus an additional $4 in presumed carriage fees that the company must now pay NBC under its new deal. Contrary to some reports that surfaced this week, Fubo did not “quietly” increase its price on customers — all affected subscribers received notifications by e-mail about the price adjustment, and the company issued a statement on its support portal about the matter.
Still, the price increase seems hefty, given that Fubo’s new arrangement with NBC Universal doesn’t include Versant-owned channels that were spun out of Comcast earlier this year — channels like SyFy, E!, USA Network and Golf Channel remain unavailable on Fubo, and it isn’t clear when or if those networks will come back.
Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal, handles negotiations of its own networks and Versant’s channels with some pay TV distributors, though the situation with Fubo strongly implies that the company is willing to forge deals that only cover NBC-owned channels while leaving Versant to handle things separately.
Comcast is in the process of spinning out NBC Universal and other parts of its media and entertainment business into a separate company.
