• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, February 11, 2022

Livestreaming service DirecTV Stream is taking advantage of the Beijing Olympics, Super Bowl and upcoming NBA All-Star Weekend to make its first free-trial offer. 

The five-day free-trial offer, available on all four of the service’s packages, follows price increases in January on three of the service's packages -- with only the basic Entertainment Plan tier's price unchanged, at $69.99. That package does not include regional sports access.

The free trial intro also appears timed to capitalize on recent offer changes by virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) competitors. 

FuboTV this week declared that new subscribers must now buy quarterly rather than monthly terms. 

In December, Hulu + Live TV raised its basic package price by $5, to $69.99, matching DirecTV Stream’s basic price — and dropped its free trial, which was for seven days. With the price hike, Disney added access to the other two parts of the Disney Bundle, Disney+ and ESPN+. 

DirecTV Stream’s free trial is available only to new subscribers who sign up online. Previously, the service offered new subscribers a 14-day money-back guarantee. 

Sling TV, fuboTV, Philo and YouTube TV all offer free trials, ranging in length from three days to two weeks.

DirecTV’s services have seen upgrades since the brand was spun off from AT&T as a separate (though still partly AT&T-owned) company last year — including the addition of a sports-focused curation feature on DirecTV Stream.

DirecTV Stream subscribers also get unlimited hours of cloud DVR storage.

DirecTV Stream's current subscriber count is not known. At the end of 2020, when it was still AT&T TV Now, it had 656,000 subscribers, down 29% year over year.

Leichtman Research estimated that DirecTV-branded pay-TV platforms lost a combined 412,000 subscribers in Q3 2021. In the same quarter,  three other leading vMVPDs added about 680,000 subscribers (compared to a gain of about 1 million in Q3 2020). Hulu + Live TV added 300,000, to total 4 million, Sling TV added 117,000 to total 2.56 million, and fuboTV added nearly 263,000, to total nearly 945,000.