The good news: There are a lot of ways to save money on streaming by taking advantage of special deals, bundles and packages in the marketplace.
The bad news: Keeping track of the growing menu of options gets more challenging by the week.
Earlier this month, Disney DIS 0.67%increase; green up pointing triangle and Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 1.88%increase; green up pointing triangle announced plans for a discounted package of Disney+, Hulu and Max that will be available this summer. And Comcast CMCSA 0.00%increase; green up pointing triangle on Wednesday will launch a $15-a-month bundle of Netflix NFLX 0.35%increase; green up pointing triangle, Apple AAPL 0.01%increase; green up pointing triangle TV+ and its Peacock service for its Xfinity customers.
More tie-ups are in the works. Bundles are a great way for streamers to expand their reach and reduce the rate of customer defections. Users, meanwhile, get a discount at a time of sharply rising streaming prices, as well as a simplified bill.
Many consumers might find the array of possibilities more confusing than helpful. Are you a Verizon or T-Mobile customer? A Walmart+ or Instacart+ member? A user of Charter’s Spectrum cable-TV service? All of this matters in the increasingly messy world of streaming.
Media executives say we may be at an intermediate point in the evolution of streaming. Things could get really, really complicated before they get simpler.
The newest bundles
Step one was for media companies to simplify things under their own tents. Disney did that by offering its full array of services—Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+—in a package known as the “Disney Bundle Trio,” for $14.99 with ads and $24.99 mostly without ads. There are also “Duo” packages that don’t include ESPN+. Paramount PARA 0.42%increase; green up pointing triangle did something similar by merging Showtime into its Paramount+ service.
The bigger challenge is for rival media companies to join forces. They have to agree on how to split revenue and who manages customer relationships. That is why the pairing of Disney and Max is a big deal. The companies are going to offer bundles of the ad-supported and ad-free versions of their services, but have yet to disclose their prices.
Disney Bundle Trio
DISNEY+
HULU
ESPN+
$7.99
$7.99
$10.99
BUNDLE
$14.99
Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery bundle
DISNEY+
HULU
MAX
$7.99
$7.99
$9.99
BUNDLE PRICE NOT YET ANNOUNCED
Expect to see more like this. Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery are bundling their sports programming into a new streaming service, Venu Sports, due to launch later this year. ESPN has had talks with the National Football League about ways to bundle their subscription offerings. The owners of Peacock and Paramount+ have explored a joint venture or partnership, The Wall Street Journal reported. And Apple has been on the hunt, too.
In some cases, it takes a third party to bring rival players to the table. Verizon has tried to carve out that role: For example, a bundle of Netflix and Max, with ads, is available to Verizon’s “myPlan” wireless customers and costs $10 a month.
Verizon bundle for “myPlan” customers
MAX
NETFLIX
$9.99
$6.99
BUNDLE
$10
To bundle or not to bundle
Bundling popular services should make a lot of sense for many consumers—but not everyone.
Dennis Jamiolkowski, for instance, already subscribes to Disney+, Hulu and Max, but he isn’t sure he will sign up for a bundle of all three services. The reason: He only pays $3 a month for Disney+ and Hulu combined—the result of a one-year deal he landed on Black Friday—so that new bundle would have to be heavily discounted to be attractive.
The 45-year-old lawyer from Long Island also likes the freedom of being able to hunt for streaming deals. “Let’s say I bundle three apps, then I see a sale for a singular app—I can’t take advantage of that sale because I’m trapped in a bundle,” he said.
Bundles might not always make sense for all streaming companies, either. Offering a discount is most beneficial if it helps a service reach many new customers.
Bundles can help with customer retention, which is a major issue for streaming services. Many users jump back and forth between platforms to watch a specific show, then cancel when they are done.
Offering multiple services as part of one package decreases the likelihood that subscribers will cancel on any given month, according to data from Antenna. The subscriber-measurement company found that most streaming services count about twice as many casual consumers—people who are either past subscribers or have signed up less than six months ago—than long-term users.
Share of consumers, by type
Have subscribed for longer than six months
Have subscribed for six months or less or
are former subscribers
0
25
50
75
100%
Netflix
Disney+
Paramount+
Peacock
Hulu
Apple TV+
Max
Here again, there is an exception: Netflix, which has the lowest rate of customer defections in the industry and twice as many long-term users as casual ones. That means it might have less to gain from bundling than its rivals, though bundles give it an opportunity to reach price-conscious consumers and expand the user base of its year-and-a-half-old ad-supported plan.
So many perks
Before you sign up for a streaming service, you should check whether you already have access to it free or at a discount. For instance, many T-Mobile customers get Netflix’s ad-supported plan at no extra cost.
A subscription to Paramount+’s ad-supported “Essential” plan (normally $5.99 a month) is included as a benefit of the $98-a-year Walmart+ membership program. Comcast’s discounted bundle of Netflix, Apple TV+ and Peacock is being made available to its TV and internet customers. Charter, meanwhile, negotiated deals with Disney and Paramount to make Disney+, ESPN+ and Paramount+ available to some of its Spectrum TV customers at no extra cost.
Services can also be tied to credit-card issuers and delivery apps, among others.
Josh Lowmon said he gets Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV+ at no extra cost through his T-Mobile subscription. A soccer fan, he used to subscribe to Peacock and Paramount+, but he canceled both when he found out he could access them at no charge through two shopping-delivery apps: Instacart+ and Walmart+, respectively.
“There’s no point in paying for something that I can get for free,” said Lowmon, a 42-year-old information-technology project manager from Denver.
Instacart+ was a popular option for football fans last season, when Peacock had exclusive rights to two games. When he found out one of the Peacock games would feature his favorite team, the Buffalo Bills, Ryan Inzana griped at the idea of having to pay just to watch a single game—until he realized his credit card gave him free access to Instacart+, which in turn offered free access to Peacock.
“In a roundabout way, we wound up getting a free subscription to Peacock,” said the 38-year-old chief financial officer from Columbia, S.C.
Streaming nirvana
The dream for many consumers is to pay one bill for all their streaming services and access them through one app—seamlessly launching a show on Netflix or Paramount+ or Disney+ without switching apps or logging in.
Companies like Apple and Roku ROKU -0.55%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which are already hubs for accessing streaming apps, are vying to become the gateway through which users watch—and, ideally, pay for—everything. You know who else is? The original bundlers of TV: the cable guys.
Through their Xumo joint venture, Charter and Comcast are looking to bring streaming and live TV together in one package by blending content from multiple platforms into a single interface.
If this is all too complicated and tangled, and if most of what you want to stream is on traditional TV—news, sports, your favorite shows—there is another option: Just sign up for cable, or a new-age version of cable such as the $72.99-a-month YouTube TV.
Write to David Marcelis at david.marcelis@wsj.com, Amol Sharma at Amol.Sharma@wsj.com and Nate Rattner at nate.rattner@wsj.com
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Appeared in the May 29, 2024, print edition as 'Streaming Bundles Are Here, But Options Can Be Complex'.
