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Comcast has announced it will launch a streaming bundle that includes Peacock, Netflix and Apple TV+, becoming the latest company to create a streaming bundle.
Comcast, a global media and technology company, has unveiled they will be launching ‘StreamSaver,’ a bundle that well be available to all Comcast broadband and TV customers, later this month. Comcast chief Brian Roberts announced the plan at MoffettNathanson’s 2024 Media, Internet and Communications Conference in New York on Tuesday,Variety reported.
The three separate streaming services – one of which is Comcast NBC’s Peacock – will “come at a vastly reduced price to anything in the market today,” Mr Roberts reportedly said; however, he did not go into detail about what the pricing may look like.
The goal is to “add value to consumers” all the while taking “some of the dollars out of” other companies’ streaming businesses, he added, the outlet said.
“We’ve been bundling video successfully and creatively for 60 years, and so this is the latest iteration of that,” Mr Roberts explained during the conference. “I think this will be a pretty compelling package.”
Currently, the cheapest way to get all three streamers separately is to buy Peacock Premium with advertisements at $5.99 per month, (but going up to $7.99 per month in July); Netflix Basic with ads, costing $6.99 a month; and the standard Apple TV+ plan at $9.99/month–bringing it to a total of $22.97 per month.
Comcast’s plan comes as other media companies have announced they will also be incorporating bundles into their services, showing that a trend of buying TV packages, harking back to traditional cable TV bundles, could be on an upward trajectory.
For more than a half-century, the cable TV bundle business was standard where companies package numerous channels together to offer subscribers whether they want them or not; however, that era is on the decline, as about 5 million people abandon cable TV every year, according to The New York Times.
This has not stopped big media companies from jumping onto the bundling trend as they compete for the attention of consumers in ongoing “streaming wars.”
Last week, a new streaming bundle made up of Disney+, Hulu and Max was announced by parent companies Disney, Warner Bros and Discovery.
The bundle will include content from ABC, CNN, Food Network, Discovery, FX, HBO, HGTV, and have both ad-supported and ad-free options.
Other bundle options already exist, such as Hulu offering a package that combines Disney+ and ESPN.
Bundles may be the answer to the overwhelming choice of media spread across differing platforms that all have their own pricing.
Reelgood, which aggregates streaming data, reported there are nearly 40,000 TV shows and films to choose from across the eight largest streaming platforms. Of the 5,000 people polled in the Subscription Wars survey, roughly a quarter paid over $1,000 each year for these different streaming platforms, while around 5 percent paid more than $2,000.
Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said they would prefer a single content hub to bundle together all of their subscriptions.
The competition for more subscribers has also led media companies such as Disney and Netflix to crack down on password sharing, forcing people to make and pay for their own accounts.
Netflix said that a recent jump in subscribers was due to its crackdown on password sharing. The company reported a major spike in new users signing up for the service and has seen revenues rise since introducing the measures.
The Independent has contacted Comcast for comment.
