Sling TV has become the latest TV streaming service to hike its monthly subscription prices, specifically for its base Orange and Blue services as the price of streaming content continues to rise.
On Thursday, Sling TV group president Gary Schanman announced monthly price hikes for base services by $5 each. That would put the monthly cost for Sling Orange or Sling Blue at $40, and Sling Orange & Blue at $55.
New Sling TV customers will pay the new price immediately, while existing customers will see the change on their next bill after Dec. 3. Schanman cited rising content expenditures by Sling TV for the subscription price hikes.
“We’re deeply committed to keeping costs low and continually work with programmers to provide service you can rely on, which is why we haven’t raised prices in nearly two years, maintaining a generous cost advantage compared to our competitors,” he wrote in the announcement. At the same time, Sling TV is following rival streamers run by Disney, Netflix and Apple in looking to offset rising programming costs as in some cases they also launch cheaper, ad-supported streaming tiers.
The price hikes for Sling TV also follow parent Dish Network reporting in a regulatory filing that it had added around 214,000 streaming TV subscribers in its latest financial quarter to get to 2.41 million subscribers for Sling TV overall.
At the same time, Dish warned rising subscriber prices could accelerate continuing losses in its overall pay TV user base, which includes traditional Dish satellite TV customers, amid an industry backdrop where linear TV has increasingly given way to streaming platforms.
“Increases in programming costs have caused us to increase the rates that we charge to our subscribers, which could in turn cause our existing pay TV subscribers to disconnect our service or cause potential new pay TV subscribers to choose not to subscribe to our service,” Dish said in the regulatory filing.
“Additionally, even if our subscribers do not disconnect our services, they may purchase through new and existing online content providers a certain portion of the services that they would have historically purchased from us, such as pay-per-view movies,” Dish warned.
The latest price hikes at Sling TV come amid stepped-up competition from rival streaming services as they fend off the impact of falling consumer confidence and spending in the overall economy.