Peacock is getting its first-ever price hike

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business

New York (CNN) — Peacock, the NBCUniversal-owned streaming service, is getting its first-ever price hike.

Beginning immediately, new users will have to pay $5.99 monthly for a premium subscription (up from $4.99) and $11.99 per month for its premium plus tier, which is mostly ad-free, up from $9.99. An annual subscription now costs $59.99 (a $10 increase) for the former plan and $119.99 (a $20 increase) for the latter tier.

Peacock alerted subscribers in an email Tuesday. Current subscribers will get one additional month at the old prices before being charged more on their next billing plan.

The three-year-old streaming service’s subscriber base has grown to nearly 22 million as of April, but its losses ballooned to more than $700 million because of increasing programming costs. The streaming service hopes to stem the losses by raising prices. A free tier was deactivated earlier this year.

Peacock was the lone holdout among streamers in hiking rates: Netflix, Paramount+, Disney+ and Max (owned by CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery) have all increased the prices of their services in recent months. Companies are no long chasing subscribers but rather investors are pressuring them to make money off the services, even if it comes at the expense of losing subscribers.

Peacock has about 80,000 hours of content, including “The Office” and “New Girl” and also streams 5,000 hours of live sports, such as Premiere League football and WWE.

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