Got used to what you were paying for ESPN? Too bad. The sports streaming platform is raising prices across almost every subscription tier it offers, just about a year after launching. According to Engadget, the increases take effect on September 17, and they hit both standalone plans and several Disney+ bundles.
The flagship ESPN Unlimited tier, which gives subscribers access to the platform plus all affiliated live broadcast feeds, is going from $30 to $32 per month. The annual version climbs from $300 to $320. That’s a roughly 6.5 percent increase on a plan that already isn’t cheap. The Select tier, which is ad-supported and covers live events, overflow content, and original shows but does not include live channel feeds, goes from $13 to $14 per month. The annual Select plan moves from $130 to $140.
Bundle subscribers aren’t getting a pass, either. The Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Select combo with ads is going up from $20 to $22 per month. The ad-free version of that same bundle jumps from $30 to $33. So if you were paying for a bundle specifically to soften the blow of ESPN’s pricing, that logic just got a little weaker.
There is one carve-out worth noting. Bundles that include ESPN Unlimited, rather than Select, appear to be holding at their current price for now. The reason is pretty transparent: ESPN recently disclosed that 80 percent of Unlimited subscribers are part of a Disney+/Hulu bundle. Raising prices on that group would risk a wave of cancellations across multiple services at once. So they’re leaving that segment alone, for now.
This is technically the first price increase ESPN’s streaming platform has seen. But it only launched last year, which makes the timing aggressive. And the sports streaming space is not exactly known for consumer-friendly pricing. Rights fees for live sports keep climbing, and companies like Disney consistently pass those costs directly to subscribers rather than absorbing them. That pattern isn’t going away.
The broader streaming industry has made annual price hikes something close to standard practice. Netflix, Peacock, Max, and others have all pushed through increases in recent years, often with little notice and minimal added value for existing subscribers. ESPN is now following that same playbook. The question is whether users will push back or simply accept it, the way most have elsewhere.
From a privacy standpoint, there’s also something worth keeping in mind here. These platforms collect significant amounts of viewing data, behavioral data, and in many cases payment and household data. As prices rise, users are paying more for a service that is also monetizing their information, especially on ad-supported tiers where targeted advertising is part of the business model. You’re not just a subscriber. You’re a data point that pays a monthly fee.
If you’re on one of the affected plans, you have a few weeks to decide whether ESPN at its new price still makes sense. Given that another increase could easily come this time next year, it’s worth asking that question now rather than later.