ESPN Unlimited Is Celebrating Its First Anniversary With a Price Hike

According to a support page on ESPN’s website, both ESPN Select and ESPN Unlimited are getting price hikes.

Starting September 17, ESPN Unlimited plans will be increasing by $2, while ESPN Select plans get a smaller $1 hike. The ESPN increases will also affect the price of the existing Disney+ bundle with ESPN Select, though ESPN Unlimited bundles will seemingly retain the same monthly pricing.

ESPN Price Hike Taking Effect September 17

ESPN Unlimited first launched almost exactly a year ago, in August 2025. The service was pitched as a particularly inclusive sports streaming service in an otherwise complicated landscape of divided licenses and leagues. ESPN Select launched at the same time to functionally replace ESPN+, with existing subscribers automatically moved over to the new plan.

ESPN has admittedly grown its content offerings since that initial launch. MLB.tv was moved to the ESPN app starting with the 2026 season, and a sublicensing deal with The CW expanded the service’s roster of college sports. More recently, ESPN acquired NFL media assets, and the NFL Network just became available to Unlimited plan subscribers on July 30.

Disney+ increased its own prices by a similar $2 margin last October. For its standalone plans, ESPN is following a similar approach of announcing the hike several weeks before it goes into effect for both new and returning subscribers, giving potential “new” customers an extra incentive to sign up before then.

Unlike the standalone ESPN plans, the price increase on the Disney+ bundle with ESPN Select has already gone into effect for new subscribers. The fact that the price increase doesn’t seem to be touching the ESPN Unlimited bundles increases the “value” of those bundles, assuming subscribers would already be interested in all three services.

It’s also worth nothing that the price hike trend extends far beyond the Disney ecosystem. Paramount+ and Netflix both announced price hikes earlier this year, while Peacock just increased its own streaming plan prices for the fourth time in four years. Will there ever be an endpoint to the price hikes? Here’s to hoping.

Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who, when she isn't following streaming news, spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.