Last March Disney already advanced that among its plans was the launch of a subscription mode to its Disney + streaming platform that would include advertising, in exchange for a cheaper price in the monthly fee, and now this mode has been announced coinciding with the confirmation of a price increase in the subscription without advertising.
The price of the cheapest Disney+ plan will be $7.99, the same as the current subscription, which will increase in price to $10.99
The announcement refers to the US market for the moment, but the price increase will also be transferred to the rest of the countries where Disney+ is available from 2023. Thus, as of December there will be a $7.99 monthly subscription that will include advertising (a maximum of 4 minutes of ads for each hour of content), a price that matches what the platform’s subscribers paid until now.
The price of the subscription without advertising insertions rises to $10.99, which represents an increase of 37%, in parallel to the price increases that are also experiencing the subscriptions of other streaming platforms such as HBOmax, Netflix -which also prepares a cheaper subscription- or Prime Video.
We will have to wait for the market response to this price increase but, for the moment, Disney+ has a very estimable market share despite the short time it has been in operation compared to other rival platforms. According to the company itself, they have some more than 152 million subscribers worldwide, having accumulated more than 14 million new users during the last quarter, figures that would be exceeding expectations.
On the horizon, Disney had announced that by the end of 2024 they expected to have between 230 and 260 million subscribers, but they have recalculated those figures and now advance a slowdown in growth so that they weight at 245 million subscribers they will have at that date.
That could mean overtaking the industry benchmark, Netflixwhich currently exceeds 220 million subscribers worldwide but is going through a period of stagnation and loss of users, down to 200,000 in the first quarter of 2022.