Philo raises price for only second time in its history

Philo, a skinny vMVPD that purposefully doesn’t offer any pricey sports channels and markets itself as the lowest offering in its category, is raising its price for the first time since 2021.

The provider, which has over 70 channels, will go from $25 per month to $28 a month for its Core plan starting June 12, 2024.

Legacy customers who are still on its original $20-a-month offering will still be allowed to keep paying that amount, as they were permitted after the last $20 to $25 increase in 2021. However, this doesn’t include all of the offerings in the Core tier. 

Philo will also include AMC+, which normally costs $8.99 a month, with Core subscriptions, so customers who had both of those offerings will actually see a slight decrease on their bill. 

The AMC+ plus offer essentially means customers are getting a $36.99 value for $28.

While it may seem counterintuitive that Philo is technically offering more programming (including what was an add-on, for less money than it would make if both were charged separately), it’s unlikely that Philo is paying AMC the full $8.99 retail cost per subscriber. 

The officering also makes sense in keeping with its value-centric branding, also sees the AMC add-on as a strong marketing move.

The price change marks only the second time Philo has raised prices since it launch in 2017.

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The service reportedly has about 1 million customers, though it’s not clear how many are on what tier. 

Rival YouTube TV has around 8 million subscribers, with Fubo coming in around 1.9 million. Neither of these services is a skinny provider, however.