After finally having caught up, and perhaps surpassed, Dish Network’s Sling TV as the top dog among virtual pay TV services, Hulu+ Live TV has announced a whopper of a price bump.
The service, which includes access to the Hulu SVOD platform, will jump from $45 a month to $55 a month.
“The new price better reflects the substantial value of Hulu+ Live TV together as the only offering that brings together live and on-demand television in one seamless experience,” Hulu said in a statement. “The new price will allow us to continue offering all of the popular live news, sports and entertainment programming [included] in the plan.”
Related: Expect More vMVPD Attrition Following PlayStation Vue Shuttering, Analyst Says
Hulu hasn’t announced a subscriber number for its virtual MVPD bundle. But in his quarterly “Cord Cutting Monitor,” published Wednesday, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett pegged the platform’s user base at 2.7 million users. That would edge out longtime vMVPD leader Sling TV, which finished the third quarter with 2.686 million users.
Sling TV launched in the first quarter of 2015, more than two years ahead of Hulu Live.
Moffett also noted the steep price increases in the vMVPD market over the last two years.
“Eighteen months ago, the cheapest video packages for vMVPDs were clustered around $30 to $35 per month,” he wrote. “Eighteen months later, most are in the $45 to $50 per month range, an increase of roughly 50%.”
With the vMVPD market billing itself as an alternative to the regular price increases of traditional pay TV, this has had an undermining effect, Moffett pointed out.
But the market has continued to grow—the analyst estimates that nearly 9 million consumers subscribe to vMVPD services.
