YouTube TV is increasing its price again, with the live TV streaming service moving from $72.99 to $82.99 per month, starting in January. Customers received an email on the price hike on Thursday morning.
The service — owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet — said in its email that the $10 bump is needed to “keep up with the rising cost of content and the investment we make in the quality of our service.”
“We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we realize this has an impact on our members,” YouTube TV added in its email. “We are committed to bringing you features that are changing the way we watch live TV, like unlimited DVR storage and multiview*, and supporting YouTube TV’s breadth of content and vast on-demand library of movies and shows.”
The service last raised prices in March 2023, when YouTube TV increased its monthly price 12%. YouTube TV, once it moves to $82.99 per month, will cost 137% more than it did when it debuted in 2017 with a monthly price of $34.99.
YouTube TV isn’t the only service to bump up its prices recently. In October, the price of Hulu+Live TV increased from $76.99 per month to $82.99 per month.
In February, YouTube TV said it had 8 million monthly subscribers. Alphabet doesn’t break out YouTube TV’s performance in its quarterly reports, instead opting to lump it in with YouTube’s overall performance. In Q3, Alphabet reported $8.9 billion in YouTube sales — its second-best quarterly revenue ever — and said YouTube had brought in $50 billion in the last 12 months. For comparison, Netflix reported sales of about $38 billion during that same time.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pointed to YouTube TV, as well as NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube Music, as key drivers of subscription growth last quarter.
Earlier this year, Moffett Nathanson said it projects YouTube TV will hit 12.4 million subscribers by the end of 2026.
“In fact, we see YouTube TV becoming the number one player in Pay TV subscribers in the U.S., surpassing Comcast in 2026,” analyst Michael Nathanson said in a note to clients.