Hulu carries out 20% price hike of live TV service

Less than a week after the launch of Disney+, Disney-owned Hulu has announced that it is raising the price of its Hulu with Live TV service by 20%.

Starting 18 December, customers will pay $54.99 per month, up from $44.99 per month. This follows a similar price increase from $39.99 per month to $44.99 per month in January.

As the title of the package would suggest, this plan is designed for cord-cutters, and offers a skinny bundle of live channels in addition to Hulu’s VOD service.

In a blog post, Hulu said that while “price changes are never easy to stomach”, the new pricing “better reflects the substantial value of Hulu + Live TV and allows us to continue offering all of the popular live news, sports and entertainment programming included in the plan.”

Other US competitors in the space, such as YouTube TV and AT&T TV Now have also increased its prices in recent months, with the former now starting at $50 per month while the latter has a basic cost of $65 per month.

The announced price increase came shortly after MoffettNathanson’s quarterly “Cord Cutting Monitor” found the service had become the top MVPD service in the country.

According to the research, Hulu Live has now reached 2.7m users, surpassing long-time market leader Sling TV, which ended the quarter at 2.7m users. Sling TV had a head start ahead of Hulu, launching its live TV offer in Q1 2015, more than two years before Hulu Live.