Quick Summary
Experienced analysts from UBS claim that Netflix will once again raise its prices later this year.
This is backed by a comment made by the streaming service's CEO during a recent earnings call.
Netflix will raise its prices yet again this year, analysts predict.
The popular streaming service is heavily tipped to increase the cost of each of its subscription tiers in the US, UK and other regions in which it operates.
John Hodulik and other UBS analysts have explained in a research note (via Variety) that they "expect to see rate increases this year". This is on top of hiking the price of Netflix Standard (Basic) in the UK, US and France late last year.
The service currently costs £4.99 / $6.99 per month for Netflix Standard with Ads, £10.99 / $15.49 for Standard (Basic), and £17.99 / $22.99 for Premium. The latter gives users access to 4K HDR streams, with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos where supported. Raising the top tier price would put it more in line with paid broadcast TV providers, such as Sky and Virgin Media.
There is weight behind the analysts' claims. During Netflix's last earnings call, the company's co-CEO, Greg Peters, revealed that the most recent price increases had no negative impact on subscriber numbers: "Those changes went better than we forecasted," he said.
"We will continue to monitor other countries and try and assess… when we’ve delivered enough additional entertainment value."
On a more positive note, he also claimed that any future price increases will help pay for further investment in new films, TV series and games.
We already know that Netflix plans to introduce live TV broadcasts to its platform in the coming year. It has signed an exclusive partnership with WWE to show WWE Raw live on Monday nights in the US and all other regions, with all other WWE programming to be on Netflix in every territory outside the States.
We doubt that will be the end of its live event ambitions neither, with rumours that it will bid for sports coverage in the future. Maybe that's all worth paying that bit extra for.
