Warner Bros. Discovery hikes Discovery+ price, first since launch
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Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) said on Tuesday that it is raising the price of its Discovery+ streaming service, the first time it has done so since it launched at the beginning of 2021.
Starting today, the price of the subscription sans advertising in the U.S. will go to $8.99 per month, up from $6.99 per month previously. The ad-supported tier will remain at $4.99 per month.
Canadian subscribers are also seeing a price hike, as they will see their respective services go to $8.99 and $5.99, up from $6.99 and $4.99, respectively.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shares rose 1.5% in mid-day trading on Tuesday.
The price hikes are notable given that Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), led by Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav, opted to put much of the content on Discovery+ into its Max streaming service, when it rebranded the service formally known as HBO Max earlier this year.
The Zaslav-led company ended the second-quarter with 95.8M subscribers, a drop of roughly 1.8M due to the combination of Max and Discovery+. Since its launch in April, Max has consistently remained among the top 10 free apps on the iOS App Store.
Max is also slated to get a live sports tier starting on Thursday, in time for the MLB playoffs.
The news comes amid several price hikes for streaming services in recent memory. On Tuesday, it was also reported that Netflix (NFLX) is considering raising its prices when the actor's strike ends.
On its August earnings call, Walt Disney (DIS) said it too would raise the price of its respective streaming services as well.

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