Peacock Gets Pricier as Sports Costs Mount

Peacock raised every subscription tier after its first profitable quarter, as costly NBA and MLB rights reshape the streaming business.

3 Sep 2026

Peacock has finally made money. Its reward for subscribers is another price rise. On August 18th NBCUniversal increased the cost of all three Peacock plans, the streaming service’s fourth rise in four years. Existing customers will pay the new rates from their first billing cycle on or after September 17th.

Premium, the advertising-supported plan, rose from $10.99 to $12.99 a month, while Premium Plus went from $16.99 to $19.99. Select, the cheapest tier, increased from $7.99 to $8.99. Peacock said the changes “allow Peacock to continue to create the best experience for its viewers, remain competitive in the marketplace, and deliver unique content across all genres.” The timing suggests profitability has encouraged rather than restrained its pricing ambitions.

Sports help explain the confidence. Comcast has committed roughly $2.45bn a year to an 11-year NBA agreement and reportedly another $200m annually for a three-year Sunday-night baseball deal. Such rights can attract audiences that are difficult for streaming rivals to reproduce. They are also expensive enough to make higher subscription revenue increasingly useful.

For viewers, repeated increases make the calculation less comfortable. Premium Plus now costs $19.99 a month, nearly twice what early customers paid. Yet Peacock’s first profitable quarter suggests that previous increases have not caused enough cancellations to derail the business, giving NBCUniversal reason to test subscribers once more.

Elsewhere in streaming, that experiment will be watched closely. The industry has been moving away from chasing subscribers at almost any cost and towards making each customer pay. If Peacock can combine expensive sports rights, higher prices and sustained profitability without provoking substantial cancellations, rivals may conclude that viewers have more tolerance for price rises than they once assumed. The risk is that they discover the limit together.