FuboTV drops lowest-cost plan, migrates current subscribers to $70 per month tier

FuboTV is ditching its lowest-cost plan and migrating any current subscribers to its Pro plan, which costs around $5 more per month, effective May 1.

The move to shift legacy customers comes after fuboTV previously stopped offering its Fubo Starter plan, with a price of about $65 per month, to new customers.

Existing Fubo Starter plan customers (and those on earlier promotional bundles, including the Family, Entertainment and Starter Promo bundles) will be migrated to the $70 per month Fubo Pro plan starting with their next billing cycle after May 1, 2022.

FuboTV, which is one of the virtual video distributors that offers live TV and competing with vMVPD leaders Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV, detailed the changes in a Q&A on the support section of its website.  

The notice says “our Fubo Starter plan, select previously-offered bundles and legacy packages are no longer being offered, and your subscription will be migrated to a new plan.”

It continued that if subscribers received an email about the change, then “the plan you currently subscribe to will no longer be offered, and your subscription will be migrated to a new plan.”

The change also applies to Fubo Start plan subscribers that pay on a quarterly basis, reflecting a change from $194.96 for three months to now $209.97 per quarter for the Fubo Pro plan.

FuboTV started testing out quarterly-only subscription packages for new subscribers in February (a short-lived experiment that lasted about a week).

One notable difference is for users that subscribe to fuboTV and are billed via Roku accounts – as they won’t be seeing any changes to features or pricing.

“We will not be making changes to Roku-billed subscriptions at this time,” Fubo said on its website.

Fubo Pro costs about $5 more per month than Fubo Starter. It comes with the same channels included, offering 120 and more than 130 events in 4K, plus 1,000 hours of cloud DVR space; up to 10 screens at once at home; live sports from NBA TV, MLB Network and NHL network; as well as entertainment channels from the GAC Family and the new Magnolia Network – the last which had required an $8 fubo Extra add-on for the Starter plan.

Another change is for customers who were still on a handful of legacy plans including: Fubo Legacy, Legacy Fubo Pro; Legacy Fubo Pro Spanish; Legacy Starter Promo; Legacy Primeria; Legacy Pro Portuguese, and potentially others. Any of those subscribers will be migrated to the Fubo Latino Monthly plan, which costs $33 per month and includes 250 hours of cloud DVR space and two simultaneous screens.  

After disclosing the price change this weekend, FuboTV’s stock was up 15.1% Monday, after losing ground last week, according to SeekingAlpha.

The virtual MVPD’s website now shows Pro as the basic tier plan, with the $80 per month Elite package offering 173 channels, plus fubo Extra with 43 channels and News Plus with 10 channels.

In February, fuboTV said it had 1.315 million global subscribers, including over 185,000 Molotov subscribers it acquired in Q4.  It ended 2021 with 1.13 million subscribers, up 106% year over year. It scaled back losses in the fourth quarter of 2021, while guiding for full year 2022 revenues of $1.08 billion-$1.09 billion.

Among competitors offers for direct to consumer streaming with live TV include YouTube TV at $65 per month, and Hulu + Live TV – now at a similar $70 per month price point (or $76 per month for Hulu with no ads).

Hulu + Live TV ended the fourth quarter with 4.3 million subscribers, making it one of the largest MVPDs in the U.S.