Streaming bundles are increasingly the way forward for households trying to juggle multiple price-hiked subscriptions. And, just eight days after Comcast revealed its plan to help you reduce the size of your streaming expenditures with its StreamSaver bundle, the media conglomerate has confirmed how much it’ll cost to subscribe to its new package deal.
On May 14, Comcast announced the debut of its StreamSaver bundle, a multi-streamer offer that would give you access to Netflix, Apple TV Plus, and Peacock at an affordable price point. Essentially, it’s a package deal that’ll save you money in the long run as you won’t have to sign up to all three platforms to enjoy the content that they offer.
At the time, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the bundle would soon be available for a “vastly reduced price”, although an official monthly fee wasn’t revealed alongside the bundle itself. Now, it looks like Comcast has kept its word, with a StreamSaver subscription coming in at just $15 per month, according to a Comcast press release.
To put that into context, individually signing up to Netflix’s Standard with Ads tier, Apple TV Plus, and Peacock Premium (Peacock’s ad-supported tier) would cost $22.97 every month. In essence, then, you’re saving yourself around $8 every 30 days by signing up to Comcast’s StreamSaver deal. To put it another way, that’s a saving of around 35% for three of the world’s best streaming services.
There are caveats to this deal, though. The $15 per month fee is on top of the price that existing and new Xfinity Internet customers pay (or will pay) for their Comcast internet and/or TV plans. If you sign up for the StreamSaver deal, you’ll also be on the ad-supported tiers for both Netflix and Peacock, rather than their non-ad-supported ones. Still, it represents a seismic saving overall; one on par with the Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus bundle, which also costs $15 per month.
If you want to get access to Now TV, too, you can bundle all four streaming platforms for $30 a month. That’s a slight increase on Comcast’s existing ‘Now TV plus Peacock’ plan, which comes in at $20 a month. Regardless, whichever plan you choose, all charges will come through as a single monthly bill, thereby making it as hassle-free as possible.
We’re gonna need a bigger bundle
It’s no secret that streaming is increasingly expensive and, as prices rise across the board in other areas, households are having to make difficult decisions about what they spend their money on. Entertainment behemoths aren’t making things easier, either, with Netflix expected to get another price hike across all tiers later in 2024, while Max may follow Netflix and Disney Plus’ lead in raising its fees, too. If costs continue to rise, more and more viewers will start voting with their feet and being more selective over the streaming services they subscribe to.
It seems many of us already are, too. A Statista study, published earlier this year, found that almost 40% of surveyed respondents “wished their shows were all on one platform”, while “one in three respondents stated that it is getting too expensive to pay for all the content they want to watch”. It’s little wonder that people are flitting between, say, Netflix or Apple’s streaming platform to watch the best Netflix shows or best Apple TV Plus shows on a monthly basis to get their money’s worth.
Bundles like Comcast’s StreamSaver, then, vastly simplify the billing process for multiple subscriptions and make it easier to justify being subscribed to multiple streaming services per household. That said, the arrival of such bundles – especially ones that herald a return to the old days of cable TV – also speaks to the need for increased subscriber growth among the major streamers, and how pricey it’s become for households to stay signed up to individual platforms. Streaming bundles like this one are likely the smartest choice you can make, and I’d be surprised if we don’t see more like them in the months and years ahead.
