YouTube TV is not getting a price hike in the ‘near term,’ according to product chief

Abner Li | Aug 3 2021 - 11:13 am PT

The biggest product change to YouTube TV in recent months was the launch of a 4K Plus add-on. In a wide-ranging interview today, YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan talked about YouTube TV and how no price hike is coming soon.

The Verge‘s Nilay Patel on the Decoder podcast asked Mohan a few questions about YouTube TV as part of a broader interview on platform monetization. The YouTube executive was directly asked about the ballooning price of the cord-cutting service and how it’s “going back up towards the price of a standard cable bundle.”

Mohan’s response was similar to past Google responses and pointed to the “economic realities of how content pricing works and the like.” He did note how new channel additions are often requested by subscribers in a defense to people who bemoan whenever the service expands with something they do not watch.

Users have asked for that content to be explicitly added to the bundle as it exists on YouTube TV. So that’s what you’ve seen there.

YouTube TV’s penchant for adding add-ons — which are now directly surfaced on televisions — was also addressed with Google seeing it as a way to “give [users] the flexibility of what else they’re looking for in the package” that might be slightly discounted compared to buying piecemeal.

The exchanged ended with Mohan saying, “there’s not another price hike or anything in the near term.” The last one to $64.99 occurred just over a year ago. That $15 jump from $49.99 was quite significant for many users. That occurred a year before in April for all users after Google stopped “grandfathering” early customers. At launch, the service cost $35, but that increased to $40 in February of 2018 for new sign-ups.

Of course, there’s no specific time range for “near team,” but it’s possible there will be no YouTube TV price hike this year.