Sling TV will increase the monthly price of its twin tiers by $5, bringing the price of “Sling Orange” and “Sling Blue” to $40 a month.
The package combining the channels of both tiers will now be priced at $55 a month.
The price increase will impact new customers immediately. Sling TV’s existing 2.4 million customers will feel the pain on their next bill on or after Dec. 3.
“Sling doesn’t own the networks you watch — we pay programmers for their channels, and the price of programming continues to rise,” blogged Sling TV group president Gary Schanman.
Also read: The Mother of All Pay TV Blackouts? ESPN Takedown on Dish and Sling TV Stirs Football Fan Revolt
Sling TV parent company Dish Network just reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, signaling a return to customer growth for its seven-year-old virtual MVPD, Sling TV, which added 214,000 customers from July 1 to September 30.
Sling TV hadn't added customers in a quarter since Q3 of 2021. In fact, this was Sling TV's best growth quarter in over two years, but the virtual pay TV platform is still down nearly 8% in customers year over year.
Sling's third-quarter growth came despite a short-lived programming blackout of Disney networks, including ABC and ESPN, that took down pro and college football games on Dish and Sling TV for almost an entire weekend in early October.
Dish quickly came to terms with Disney, its most expensive program licensing partner, and restored the networks.
Meanwhile, with 560,000 pay TV customers bolting Comcast’s far pricier Xfinity X1 video service in Q3, it was expected that some of them would maintain their football fix by opting for Dish's cheaper virtual pay TV alternative.
It was also expected that Sling would announce a price increase soon after making its carriage renewal with Disney, but the operator held the line until after having solid numbers to report at its next earnings call. ■
