YouTube TV says it will begin offering cheaper, more targeted packages of programming starting early next year.
YouTube TV Plans, a collection of 10 different packages, are designed to offer “more choice and flexibility to our subscribers,” the company said Wednesday in a blog post. Individual plans can be combined, allowing heavy viewers of sports and news, for example, to get their fix without paying extra for general entertainment fare that is increasingly available outside of the pay bundle. A family entertainment plan is also in the mix.
Pricing and a launch date have not yet been announced for the packages, which include a sports plan with a comprehensive selection of channels including all of the ESPN networks.
Christian Oestlien, a YouTube veteran who was recently upped to VP of subscription products, joined Justin Connolly, VP and global head of sports and media, at a press dinner in New York on Tuesday to discuss the initiative.
By rolling out the sports plan, Oestlien said, “we want to continue to make discovering programming easier. Rather than all of these games happening and you not knowing what you can see and where, we’re bringing it to one place.”
The launch of Plans comes on the heels of bruising negotiations with programmers in recent months, culminating with a standoff with Disney that resulted in a 15-day blackout that ended last month. TelevisaUnivision went dark for even longer, and NBCUniversal and Fox Corp. went to the brink before reaching agreements.
Oestlien and Connolly acknowledged that preparations for the new offering introduced a new element in negotiations with programmers, one that required extra reassurances at the bargaining table. Connolly, who spent 25 years at Disney, moved to YouTube last spring, prompting a poaching lawsuit by Disney. The complaint was settled last fall. Sensitivities have been high on the distribution front for ESPN and Disney as the media giant has rolled out a beefed-up ESPN app, whose Unlimited tier includes feeds from more than a dozen linear networks. The move is a hedge against ongoing erosion of traditional pay-TV subscribers.
Against a backdrop of cord-cutting and retreat by many top operators, YouTube TV has been on a growth spurt, in part because it added rights to NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023. Corporate parent Google reported YouTube TV had surpassed 8 million subscribers by early 2024. Industry sources have pegged it at more than 10 million, with a clear path to becoming the No. 1 pay-TV distributor in the U.S. in the next couple of years.
The streaming bundle first hit the market in 2017, at a monthly price of $35, as a result of the company wanting to mend fences with entertainment companies in the wake of the infamous Viacom lawsuit. It was positioned as a “skinny bundle,” competing with services like Dish Network’s Sling TV and Disney’s Hulu + Live TV for customers looking for a cheaper, more tech-forward alternative to traditional cable and satellite options. The word “skinny” no longer applies as prices have risen across the sector, reflecting higher fees charged by programmers. YouTube TV’s regular plan jumped 14% earlier this year, to $82.99, its second price hike in less than two years.
A number of competing national services, including DirecTV and Fubo, already have smaller, cheaper genre-specific plans in the market, including sports-focused bundle. Regional cable operators like Comcast have also added them to their menus. ESPN attracted 2.1 million subscribers to its new service from its launch in August through September 30, with Disney CEO Bob Iger saying it has fared “extremely well” in the early going.
The blog post announcing YouTube TV Plans was brief and offered few details. But it said the new offerings would give viewers “greater control over what they want to watch. Our goal is to let you tailor your subscription with more options.”
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