The sticker price for YouTube TV is $82.99 a month, but I haven’t paid that in nine months. I am still paying that old rate of $72.99, and I got one offer at some point to pay $49.99 for two months. The gimmick is not a coupon site or sketchy reseller. But it is just YouTube TV’s own retention mechanism, and a bit of timing.
Here’s exactly how it works, why Google offers these discounts and how you can check for the same deals on your account.
The retention offers in plain sight
So when the new higher price took effect, I visited the Membership page with a mind to cancel. When I pressed the Cancel button, I was offered a simple deal: A six month rate of my existing $72.99 if I stayed. No hoops, no contract extensions required, no add-ons.
So six months in, just before I was losing the discount, I went back to the Membership page. Another six months at $72.99 — an all new extension of the same price lay waiting. All by itself, that was a $120 annual savings for me. On another visit I was shown a slighly better, targeted offer for $49.99 (i.e., two months). I didn’t grab that one but it proved to be true: these deals cycle through and pop up right there in your account dashboard, occasionally as the result of starting a cancellation process.
The key: not every one else gets/has the same offer, and not everyone always has it available. But, it’s prevalent enough that if you’re able to check it every once in a while, you may be able to meaningfully lower your bill without any long-term downside.
Why Google does it
This is classic churn management in business terms. It’s cheaper to retain a subscriber than win back one. When the math pencils out that easily, if even $10 per month in concessions will prevent a cancellation.
Alphabet has said it counts more than 8 million subscribers to YouTube TV, making it the biggest internet-delivered live TV provider in the U.S. Analysts at firms including Antenna and MoffettNathanson have tracked a surge in targeted discounts and win-back offers throughout the streaming landscape. A temporary price break can save hundreds of dollars in annual revenue per household wisely without inflating metrics like average revenue per user and therefor churn to levels that are more reasonable.
In other words, that’s why you’re unlikely to find advertisements for these deals splashed across the page of a magazine. They’re designed to snare customers on the verge of taking their custom elsewhere — seen only by those who know where to look, invisible to those who do not.
How to see if they offer a discount—step by step
Begin on a desktop browser or the mobile app, and navigate to your YouTube TV account’s Membership page. If you have an offer available to you, it will usually be listed near your base plan price or under Options. It might read something like “Keep your current price for six months” or be a lower monthly rate that is good only for a few months.
If you don’t, go ahead and start the cancellation process. You may be asked why you are leaving; select the answer that best reflects your circumstances. The system commonly surfaces a retention price or temporary discount before the cancellation is completed. If you must, accept and close. If not, you can still proceed with the cancellation.
Be sure to check back from time to time, particularly before your billing cycle rolls over. Offers do change, and I’ve discovered new ones have popped up even when I wasn’t making an effort to cancel.
Even more legit ways to pay less
Leverage Family Group sharing. One base plan can be shared between you and up to five other members of your household, who doesn’t reside in a different building, which would bring down the price for everyone — not counting what will go on to you tab.
Use Pause strategically. You can also put your YouTube TV membership on pause for as long as six months. Meanwhile, if you just want live TV for certain spates of season or sports events, pausing can chop off months you’d keep paying for idle service — and sometimes the act of pausing (and resuming) syncs up with new offers being doled out.
Avoid add-ons you don’t use. Premium networks and 4K packs can make the cost of a monthly bill swell. Audit your library and purge the surplus, if it’s not something you’re actively watching. You can always re-add for the big game or some hot new show and then remove afterwards.
What to expect and what not to do
These reductions are focused, not obligatory. Some accounts will receive them; terms are subject to change; taxes and regional fees can differ. If you don’t get a deal, it’s not anything specific you’re up to — it just might not be your turn.
Do not abuse the system by account hopping or breaking household rules. YouTube TV has location, device, and family group restrictions. Just play by the platform’s rules; the retention discounts are intended to function within them.
Bottom line
I’ve managed to keep my YouTube TV bill under the current sticker price for nine months now, just by going into the Membership page and hitting cancel flow when necessary. It’s fast, it’s fair, and it is precisely how the service attempts to prevent restaurants from leaving in the first place. If you like live TV, but not at that inflated price tag, visit the Membership page every month — you might be surprised by what appears.