While Sling TV costs a bit less than some of its big-name rivals, like Hulu with TV or YouTube TV, a new price rise means you'll be paying a little more for the live TV streaming service.
Sling TV now costs $40 per month for either its Blue or Orange packages or $55 for both, an increase of $5 over the previous price tags of $35 for the individual packages and $50 for the combined offering. The price hike begins on December 3 for existing customers, but is immediate for new subscribers.
Sling TV Orange is focused on sports, offering ESPN and its family of channels, while Blue is more for news and entertainment and allows subscribers to access their local Fox and NBC stations. Both Orange and blue, though, include some key channels like AMC, National Geographic, Lifetime and BBC America. The bundled package is a great streaming deal though, with a $5 price increase relatively minor, all things considered.
Both Sling TV Blue and Orange have extra channels you can subscribe to, for an extra fee, but these aren't increasing in price. Most of these cost $5-$6, though a few, like Sports Extra or the NBA League Pass, are priced higher.
In a press release, Sling TV explained that the rising cost of programming is to blame for its price increase. It also pointed out that this was the first price increase in two years.
This comes in the midst of a series of subscription service price increases, with Hulu and Apple TV Plus both bumping up prices in the last month, and Disney Plus and Netflix both getting ad-enabled tiers in order to offset, or reduce the scale of, their own cost increases.
So while Sling TV's own price hike might seem minor in the grand scheme of things, if you own multiple streaming services, you could find yourself paying a lot more for your on-demand video very soon.
