The other shoe has finally dropped.
After months of speculation, HBO Max is finally announcing a price increase. Starting today, the streamer’s ad-free tier will increase from $14.99 per month to $15.99 per month.
Meanwhile, existing subscribers who are presently paying $14.99 per month will notice their monthly fee increase to $15.99 per month with the start of their subsequent payment cycle on or after Feb. 11.
This price increase of one dollar “will allow us to continue to invest in providing even more culture-defining programming and improving our customer experience for all users,” HBO Max said in a statement.
This is the first time HBO Max has raised its prices since its debut in May 2020.
In September 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Tech Conference that HBO Max and Discovery+ are “fundamentally underpriced.”
Given the quality of the content on the services, Wiedenfels said WBD has plenty of opportunities to hike prices.
Two months later in November 2022, JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and interactive at the company, predicted streaming prices would move “north” of its current offerings.
Perrette said since the company has not hiked prices in three years, there’s an “opportunity, particularly in this environment,” to increase prices, as other streamers implement rate hikes and the world is plagued by inflation.