In the last few months YouTube TV, Sling TV, DIRECTV NOW, and PlayStation Vue have all raised their prices. So, what is causing the price hikes? It looks like legacy cable TV contract policies are the cause.
To find out what is causing these price hikes, Cord Cutters News chatted with several people who asked not to be identified. According to our sources the answer is simple: Networks are charging more for their content.
To understand the price hikes you have to look at how TV contracts work. When a service like Sling TV, DIRECTV NOW, YouTube TV, and PlayStation Vue strike a deal with a provider it typically has built-in price hikes. This means the first year of a deal is at a lower rate than year number three.
It seems that while companies like Dish, Google, and Sony are all looking for ways to change TV, the networks still want their built-in price hikes.
The automatic price hikes may not be the only reason. With YouTube TV, for example, it was reported that to add more networks they had to raise the price or lose money. Yet for others like Sling TV who kept their price the same for over three years at some point the automatic price hikes just caught up to them.
Slowly the world of TV is changing. Although no one likes price hikes, the $5 price hike on streaming services is far less expensive than the $10 to $15 price hikes some cable TV customers saw this year. Hopefully, as markets keep changing we can get rid of automatic price hikes in contracts.
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