Will Prime Video Raise Prices Thanks to New NBA Deal? How Much More Will You Have to Pay?
Will Prime Video Raise Prices Thanks to New NBA Deal? How Much More Will You Have to Pay?
One analyst thinks a price hike for Prime Video is all but guaranteed as it prepares to welcome the NBA.
Amazon is about to make a huge addition to its sports lineup. At least, probably. The NBA has agreed to sell a package of nationally-broadcast games to Prime Video for $1.8 billion per season over the next 11 years. A lawsuit filed by Warner Bros. Discovery to try and claw back that package for itself could throw a wrench in the plans, but if the suit fails Prime Video will take over as an NBA broadcast partner in 2025. If it does, one analyst thinks Prime Video is certain to raise prices to help it reclaim some of the revenue it’s spending to carry NBA games.
Key Details:
- Dan Salmon of New Street Research thinks Prime Video will raise prices in 2025.
- The shift to a mostly ad-supported customer base will keep prices steady in 2024.
- A modest price hike is more likely than a big one, but Amazon’s former tactics make it somewhat hard to predict.
The prediction of a price increase for Prime Video comes from New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon, as reported by Next TV. Salmon thinks that once 2025 rolls around and Prime Video gets its hands on NBA rights, it will have all the cover it needs to ask customers to pay a little more.
Salmon also thinks that Amazon will wait until 2025 because it already made one big change to its pricing schedule in 2024. In January, Prime Video switched its ad-free tier to an ad-supported plan, keeping the price steady at $8.99 per month. Customers who wanted to continue ad-free had to upgrade plans and pay $11.99 per month to do so.
“We think the addition of NBA rights puts Amazon in a better position to raise the price of Prime in 2025, after promising to leave price in place in 2024 as advertising rolls out on Prime Video,” Salmon wrote in a research note.
If Prime Video Increases Prices, How Much Will it Rise?
Paying nearly $2 billion per season for a package of regular season and playoff NBA games is a reasonable justification for asking customers to pay a little more for Prime Video. But given the history of recent price increases at other streaming services like Peacock and Paramount+, I don’t think fans will have to pay too much more to watch Prime Video once it adds the NBA.
A rise of $1 per month for ad-supported streaming, and $2 to $3 per month for ad-free seems the most likely outcome. Prime Video has more than 200 million subscribers around the world, so even these modest rate increases would help the streamer pull a hefty amount of new revenue in. Officially, I will predict that ad-supported Prime Video will cost $9.99 per month starting some time in 2025, and ad-free will rise to $14.99.
Amazon’s past behavior could indicate its price increase will be a little harder to predict, however. The streamer used a somewhat unorthodox strategy for its ad-tier rollout in January; instead of creating a cheaper ad plan for customers to subscribe to as Netflix and other services have done, Prime Video simply converted all customers to ad-supported unless they agreed to pay more. It was a shrewd business move, and Amazon may be willing to raise prices higher than the increases I predicted if it thinks customers will not revolt at the prospect.
I’ll stick with my prognostication for now, but Amazon didn’t become the online retail giant it is without knowing how to effectively get the most out of its customers. A price increase seems likely for Prime Video once it adds the NBA in 2025, but how much of an increase could be hard to pin down until it’s officially announced.
Prime Video
Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.