Why Did FuboTV Drop Its Monthly Plans Before the Super Bowl?
TV Answer Man, I was thinking of subscribing to FuboTV to watch the Super Bowl in 4K and I see that you can only subscribe for every three months. What’s the deal with that? You can’t subscribe by the month like everyone else on the planet? How can they stay in business? — Mark, Del Rio, Texas.
Mark, FuboTV today “temporarily” eliminated the monthly subscription plan for new subscribers. As of now, if you want to subscribe to Fubo, you will have to pay at least $224.07 up front for three months of service. The upfront price would be $284.97 if you subscribed to the most expensive plan, called Premier.
But before you write off FuboTV as a viable business, let me reiterate that the live streamer said the switch is “temporary.”
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“We have temporarily made our channel packages available to new subscribers as quarterly plans. We’re always experimenting with our channel package offerings to better understand what our subscribers like,” a FuboTV spokesperson told the TV Answer Man.
It’s also important to note that FuboTV did the same thing last year before the Super Bowl only to resume the monthly plans about 10 days later. It would appear FuboTV has some concerns about people signing up for one month and then canceling soon after the Super Bowl, although it still permits a 7-day free trial. (Fubo also sends reminder e-mails before the 7-day free trial ends.)
Consequently, I doubt that FuboTV will require the quarterly-only subscription plans for more than a few weeks after the Super Bowl; it would likely lose a significant number of new customers if it did.
Mark, hope that helps. Happy viewing and stay safe!
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No Fubo TV for me until they bring back TBS and TNT and A&E and other channels that used to be Time Warner-Turner
LOL. Another instance of my favorite business face plant.
“We’d rather have no money than some money”.
Simultaneously leaving $ on the table, and stating that they firmly believe that nobody that used their product for a month would want to continue using it.
It doesn’t really get better than this for Fubo. But it has looked for a while now that it’ll come down to youtube tv and hulu with live tv. Sling costs so much now, as does Philo for what they offer, that you’re better off paying a few bucks more for the big players. And the Free View options aren’t terrible either.
The idea of a sports oriented live streaming service has promise. But I just don’t see what Fubo brings to the table that the other players don’t, outside of a few channels in some markets.
Sling tv just launched a new free streaming option yesterday. A relaunch of Sling Free with about 70 more channels.
It includes all of those channels, but I think they’re just live streams.
https://tvanswerman.com/2023/02/09/sling-tv-launches-free-ad-supported-streaming-service/
This is/was a dumb idea. Somehow the top search result for how to stream the Super Bowl was a CBS site that listed only fuboTV. I had never heard of it, and told those at my party how stupid CBS was for not streaming directly somehow. I then started to sign up for FuboTV, since I had a house full of guests. When I saw the “quarterly pricing” let alone the actual price ($75/$85/$95/mo!), I thought they were nuts. But they did have “7 days free” and all I wanted was the Super Bowl. Got to the debit card page (you know, for billing later if you “forget” to cancel), and I stopped and searched the web again.
I discovered, as most already knew, that Fox Sports app was streaming, for free, to all platforms/devices without requiring local cable/channel verification. Now THAT is how you do business. Did Fox have more options that FuboTV since they were originating the broadcast? Sure. Did Fox Sports win a new customer/app user? Yep. Did FuboTV lose one before they ever got one? You bet.
Not only that, but this whole conversation happened publicly at a live event. I hope they bilked enough customers out into a 3 month contract to make it worth all those they lost. I have waaay better places to put my money!