ESPN+ Price Will Rise 43% In August, Reflecting Increase In Live Sports Offerings

deadline.com:

ESPN+, which has grown dramatically over the past couple of years while also adding a significant amount of live sports offerings, will increase its monthly price to from $7 to $10 a month on August 23.The 43% rate hike is the second one in a little more than a year for ESPN+, which launched in 2018 and now has 22.3 million subscribers.The change was not formally announced but was confirmed to Deadline by a person familiar with the company’s plans.The price for the Disney Bundle, which includes Hulu’s on-demand service, Disney+ and ESPN+ is not increasing in conjunction with the ESPN+ move. (Plans for the bundle start at $14 a month.) Pay-per-view UFC event prices are also remaining unchanged.An uptick in the stand-alone price tag of ESPN+ is not a surprise given the influx of live events on the service.

More than 1,000 out-of-market NHL games and extended PGA Tour coverage — programming which previously cost twice the monthly subscription price of ESPN+ — is now included, along with the NFL, college sports, tennis and many other sports.

A growing roster of original series like Man in the Arena: Tom Brady, Peyton’s Places and upcoming Derek Jeter outing The Captain, is also a key part of the mix.While only a few fringe sports were available live on ESPN+ when it debuted in April 2018, most rights deals sealed since then and certainly all of them moving forward include the streaming service as a key component of overall carriage.

The broader landscape has seen a significant number of sports head to streaming, including the NFL’s watershed deal with Prime Video for Thursday night games and Apple TV+ and NBCUniversal’s Peacock exclusive Major League Baseball packages.The Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN, is under increasing