Last year Disney+ raised its price, and now it looks like in 2023, the price is going up again. During Disney’s 2nd quarter 2023 earnings call, Disney said that the price of the Disney+ would be going up sometime this year but stopped short of announcing what the new price would be or when the price change would happen.
This is not the first time that Disney has said the price of Disney+ is going up. In March Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, gave a talk at the 2023 Morgan Stanley Technology. During that event, he talked about Disney+’s pricing and Disney’s thoughts on Hulu.
When asked about Disney+ and its pricing strategy Bob Iger said, “in our zeal to grow global subs, I think we were off in terms of our pricing strategy, and we’re now starting to learn more about it and to adjust accordingly.” He went on to say that Disney+ needs a “pricing strategy that makes sense.”
Bob Iger also went on to say that Disney needed to justify better what it spends on content vs what it was making. In short, Bob Iger said, “we have to better rationalize our costs” and “obviously, we have to attract more subs.” This was once again talked about during Disney’s earnings call this week as Disney said they will again cut the amount of content Disney is making for its streaming service.
Why the price hikes? Disney+ is not expected to make a profit until 2024 or 2025. Disney has said it wants to focus on making streaming profitable as soon as possible.
The question now is when will Disney+ price go up and by how much.
For now, we will need to see what happens next. What is clear is Disney’s streaming lineup may look very different in the years to come, both in price and what is offered.
Disney is not alone as it struggles to find something that works. Cable TV prices are going up this year, Peacock is ending its free service, and Discovery+ and HBO Max are merging. All of this is happening as companies try to figure out how to become profitable and survive in a very crowded streaming world.