Disney Plus just lost 700,000 subscribers, but that won’t stop another price hike – far from it
- Disney Plus lost 700,00 subscribers this past quarter
- This is the first time the service has posted a quarterly subscriber drop
- But the service is making more revenue than ever
Disney Plus has lost 700,000 users since September 28, 2024, likely due to price increases and its password-sharing crackdown, but I have bad news for you: that’s not going to stop Disney from raising prices again. In fact, Disney’s tactics have been a complete success.
At first, it doesn’t look like a Disney win; after all, this would mark the first time it has posted a quarterly subscriber drop since the Disney Plus platform was launched. But this negative milestone isn’t significant when you get into the numbers.
Firstly, the platform now sits at 124.6 million users, down from 125.3 million, so 700,000 represents just over 0.5% of users leaving between its quarterly reports. Meanwhile, those price rises – which saw Disney Plus with ads go from $7.99 to $9.99 and the ad-free tier going up to $15.99 from $13.99 – represent a 25% and 14% hike, respectively, for each tier, so the remaining subscribers would more than cover the cost of people leaving.
But the real kicker for people hoping we could somehow convince Disney, Netflix, and the rest that price rises and password-sharing crackdowns are a bad idea is this: in researching this article, I found that Disney’s subscriber drop was from international Disney Plus users – not those in the US or Canada where these significant price hikes happened. In fact, US and Canada Disney Plus numbers rose by 800,000 this past quarter despite the hike.
So according to Disney’s earnings report, in the US and Canada, Disney Plus went from making an average of $431.2 million a month to $453.83 million, and overall, it went from $902.16 million to $940.73 million per month.
All this is to say, as loud as we all are about hating price hikes and not being able to share our passwords for free, companies are incentivized to keep doing it because, financially, it’s a clearly successful strategy. So even though Disney is expected to lose even more subscribers by its next quarterly report, don’t expect it to change course any time soon – and as much as I hate to say it, expect 2025 to include plenty more price hikes across the best streaming services, and more password sharing crackdowns too.