Track and field, gymnastics, swimming, fencing, and more are on tap for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris—and if you’re planning on streaming the games on Peacock this summer, a price hike is coming your way, too.
Starting roughly a week before the July 26 start of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Peacock will raise prices for new customers by $2 a month.
Starting on July 18, Peacock’s with-ads Premium tier will cost $7.99 a month for new subscribers, up from $5.99/month, while the ad-free Premium Plus plan will go up to $13.99 a month, $2-a-month increase for each tier, Deadline reports.
Peacock’s annual plans are getting price hikes too, with the annual Premium plan increasing to $79.99, while a year’s worth of Premium Plus will cost $139.99, up from $59.99 and $119.99, respectively.
Current Peacock subscribers will see their rates go up on their next billing cycles after August 17, Deadline says.
If it feels like Peacock just raised its prices recently, well, you’re not wrong.
The streamer imposed its first-ever price hike in July 2023, when new subscribers got hit with a $1-a-month price increase for Premium and a $2/month hike for Premium Plus. Existing Peacock subscribers weathered the price increase a month later.
The timing for Peacock’s latest price hike comes just before the start of perhaps the biggest sporting event of the year: the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
The Summer Olympics are set to kick off on July 26, just eight days after the Peacock price hike takes effect for new users.
Peacock has long been an also-ran in the streaming wars, with just 34 million subscribers. Disney+, in contrast, has more than 150 million subscribers, while both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video boast north of 200 million users each.
But Peacock has been showing signs of strength lately thanks to some hit shows and improving financials, and it’s likely to get a big (if potentially temporary) bump from the Olympics.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he covers smart speakers, soundbars, and other smart and home-theater devices. You can follow Ben on Twitter.