All is not wonderful in the Enchanted Kingdom. The Disney+ streaming platform lost subscribers for the third consecutive quarter. Overall, the entire Disney group saw its very mixed financial results in the summer. So to go up the slope and improve its profitability, the CEO of Walt Disney Bob Iger decided to raise the prices of subscriptions to Disney +. “We had already raised our prices in 2022,” said Bob Iger, the company’s boss, during a conference call on Wednesday. “And we hadn’t seen any significant drop in subscriber numbers, which was heartening.”
The monthly subscription to the platform, without advertising, will thus increase from 11 to 14 dollars in October in the United States, double the initial price four years ago, when Disney + was launched with fanfare to compete with Netflix. For the moment, the group has not indicated whether its prices would also be revised upwards in France.
Fight against account sharing
Like Netflix, the company has also planned to tighten the screw in 2024 on the sharing of passwords between users to prevent them from enjoying content for free.
This method allowed Netflix to see its number of subscribers jump in the second quarter. The industry pioneer has more than 238 million worldwide, compared to 146 million for Disney+.
In North America, the service recorded a slight drop of 1% in the number of subscribers, the second consecutive one. But this summer, the number of subscribers to Disney +, excluding India, “will rebound in the United States and internationally”, promised Kevin Lansberry, acting chief financial officer. Bob Iger was also pleased that 3.3 million people have subscribed to the subscription with advertisements since its launch at the end of last year.