Fubo Ditches Premier Plan for New Customers in Latest Subscription Plan Experiment
A Fubo spokesperson confirmed that the Premier plan is gone for new customers, but says it may return at some point in the future.
Anyone who follows Fubo or is a customer of the sports-focused live TV streaming service knows that its engineers and executives love running experiments to find the optimal configuration for the platform. Those experiments are continuing this week, as Fubo has decided to sunset the Premier plan, its most expensive subscription tier ahead of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
- A Fubo spokesperson confirmed the removal of the Premier plan for new customers to The Streamable.
- The spokesperson also said that the Premier plan could return at a later date.
- The Premier plan replaced Fubo’s “Ultimate” plan in October 2023.
New customers coming to Fubo — or lapsed subscribers returning to the platform — will notice that the Premier plan is no longer an option for new signups. The plan had a base price of $99.99 per month, with an additional regional sports network (RSN) fee that the vast majority of customers had to pay thanks to additional channel availability in their respective markets. Those fees bumped the price of the Premier plan as high as $114.99 per month for viewers with two or more RSNs in their area. Current subscribers of the Premier plan won’t see any changes as of now, and will be able to continue streaming their service as normal; new customers, however, will not find the Premier plan available.
“We are currently testing our bundles, which offer the best value for consumers, on our Welcome page,” a Fubo spokesperson told The Streamable. “The Premier plan is still available for existing subscribers and we may bring it back for new customers.”
Fubo frequently performs these types of subscription plan tests throughout the year. The Premier plan was first introduced as a replacement for Fubo’s also now-defunct “Ultimate” plan in January 2023, then swapped the two for each other again in August. In October, Fubo once again discontinued the Ultimate plan and brought back the Premier plan, so this latest elimination of the Premier tier could be an indication that the Ultimate tier will eventually return, potentially ahead of the fall football season.
The Premier plan included nearly 300 channels and offered viewers access to SHOWTIME, which no other Fubo plan currently offers. Customers who want to see SHOWTIME content can access it via Paramount+ with SHOWTIME for $11.99 per month.
Does Premier Plan’s Retirement Have to Do with March Madness?
Fubo’s experiments often coincide with major events. In recent years around the Super Bowl, Fubo would move from monthly to quarterly subscription plans to get the most out of sports fans looking for a place to stream the Big Game; Fubo would always revert back to a monthly format in the weeks following the Super Bowl. Fubo did not make any similar moves this year, but it did update its user interface the week following the game.
The 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament starts next week, but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the start of the tournament and the timing of Fubo’s decision to nix the Premier plan for new subscribers. Fubo carries CBS in a large number of markets, but it does not offer TNT, TBS, or truTV on any plan — including the former Premier option — so Fubo subscribers’ viewing plans for the tournament will be unaffected by the change.
It can be hard to decipher the timing of Fubo’s various tests and experiments, but the timing of its recent price increase was much easier to predict. Fubo raised prices on all of its plans by $5 in January, following a new retransmission agreement with local-station owner Nexstar that allowed Fubo to keep carrying all Nexstar-owned local affiliates to national networks inclduing ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.
Prospective Fubo customers can now choose between the Pro plan and the Elite plan. The Pro plan runs $79.99 per month before RSN fees increase the price up to $91.98 (one RSN) or $94.98 (two RSNs or more), and allows viewers to watch more than 175 channels, as well as grants access to 1,000 hours of cloud DVR. The Elite plan bumps the channel count up to more than 250, and allows viewers to watch select events live in 4K for a base price of $89.99 per month before RSN fees. Fubo is also offering a limited-time deal of $20 off the first month for new customers.
Customers in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia areas will be able to watch their favorite local baseball teams with Fubo this season, as the streamer recently added the MASN regional sports channel. This network carries regular season games from the Baltimore Orioles as well as the Washington Nationals.
Fubo
Fubo is a live TV streaming service with about 90 top channels that start at $79.99 per month. This plan includes local channels, 19 of the top 35 cable channels, and regional sports networks (RSNs). In total, you should expect to pay about $91.99 per month, after adding in their RSN Fee. Fubo was previously known as “fuboTV.”