Evan Selleck
Despite a price hike in late 2022, Disney is still looking to jack up the monthly cost of its Disney+ and other streaming options.
Disney raised the price of Disney+ by $3 before the end of 2022, a 30% increase from $7.99 per month to $10.99 per month for subscribers in the United States. The company's CEO, Bob Iger, has said before that he believes Disney+ pricing is not quite correct, and the service is apparently marching towards whatever vision he has.
As reported by Variety, Disney is going to hike up the price of Disney+ yet again, with the new price going into effect beginning October 12, 2023. Disney+ will jump up 27%, from $10.99 to $13.99 per month for streamers in the U.S.
On top of that, Hulu will be raising the price of its ad-free tier to $17.99 per month, up from $14.99 per month — a 20% increase. The ad-supported tiers for Disney+ and Hulu will remain at $7.99 per month.
The pair of Hulu + Live TV plans are going up $7 per month, with the ad-supported option going up to $76.99 and the ad-free option going up to $89.99 per month. Even ESPN+ isn't avoiding the price hike, going up by $1 to $10.99 per month.
On the international side of things, the ad-supported option for Disney+ is launching in Canada, the United Kingdom, and an additional eight European countries beginning November 1, 2023. In Canada, the streaming service will cost $7.99, 4.99 in the UK, and 5.99 in France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
In December of 2023, Disney will be raising the prices for the ad-free tiers of Disney+ in those same regions. What's more, following in Netflix's footsteps, Disney will be working on tools to crack down on password-sharing, which should debut sometime in 2024.
Price hikes galore
While Bob Iger isn't going out of his way to say just how much he believes Disney+ should cost per month, it's obvious the company is not afraid to keep hiking prices. Since the service launched four years ago, Disney+ has doubled in price from $6.99 per month.
Apple TV+ bannerWhen Disney+ launched, it was easy to compare it to Apple TV+'s pricing, which was $4.99 per month. The two services were compared due to pricing and available content, with Disney+ outpacing Apple TV+ and only costing a couple of dollars more.
However, while Apple TV+ did raise its price from $4.99 per month to $6.99 per month, Apple has been adding new films, series, and documentaries on a semi-regular basis. It has managed to avoid doubling its monthly cost so far.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
10 Comments
Apple TV+ is, just at the moment, one of the best values in streaming television, even after last year’s price rise. We tend to pay the yearly rate for the services we like, which instantly saves us two month’s worth of the cost AND protects us from price rises until the next renewal.
TV+ seems to have figured out what so few other streaming services know: it’s not the exclusives OR sheer mass quantity that keeps subscribers on board; it’s the overall quality of the offerings. Even with the shows I have zero interest in on Apple TV+, I can see that they were all made with great care, properly budgeted, and do their very best to appeal to their audiences.
I hope Apple doesn’t give in to the temptation to start offering an ad-supported tier; ads were precisely what drove me to cut the cord in the first place.
Apparently the profits available from ad-supported services are higher than those of ad-free services, even with the higher price charged for the latter. Once that information was revealed it was only a matter of time before the ad-free prices were raised.
But given the entertainment industry's strike action we know there's a limited supply of new shows and movies in the near future. Services with a large collection of content worth watching are probably going to survive, same for sports providers. Everyone else is going to end up on the wrong side of a cost/benefit analysis.
I recently canceled Amazon prime. I still have Netflix but just because it’s free on my internet subscription. Rarely watch it.
Ad-supported tiers are the only way the streamers are going to be viable with so many of them now offered. Let’s face it, the amount any of us are willing to pay for all the streaming available has a ceiling. We’re simply not going to keep paying more, and more and more. On the other hand, if we can have a decent service at an attractive price, that works. I had abandoned Netflix because it had gotten ridiculously expensive. The truth is with multiple streaming services available, all of them delivering appealing original content, ditching one or two barely makes a dent. Then Netflix brought out a ad-supported service at an appealing $5.99 a month price point here in Canada and I signed back up. I’m a baby boomer who grew up watching ad-supported TV. It hardly bothers me and I’d rather save money with ads to live with than pay way more than I think a service is worth. The great thing is, keeping the price of the ad-supported tiers low is a good thing for the service provider because the more subscribers you can attract, the more you can charge advertisers. Meanwhile I can save $10 a month or somewhere thereabouts while still enjoying the content offered. The ads are not that intrusive and well work saving in excess of $120 a year. If the Disney ad-supported tier is launched here for $7.99, I’ll sign up for that - maybe not year-round - but enough to watch the few shows on it that I like.
As for Apple, hopefully the price will never go up and the quality remain high. What I like is that Apple is focused on what matters to me, namely, original content. The legacy stuff I’ve got covered with a vast library of movies, some digital some disc. The thing is, not raising the price can work in so much as the more subscribers you have the more money you bring in. Keep the cost in the sweet spot and over time the revenue will be there.
The higher prices for ad free content may backfire. It's getting to the point, if we aren't there already, that it may pay to only have one streaming subscription at a time. It's not like any streaming service has enough desirable content to occupy one for an entire year, and it will be better to subscribe, watch what you want, unsubscribe, subscribe to a new service, watch what you want, unsubscribe, repeat... Eventually you make your way back around to the first service and begin the cycle again.