Effective October 12, the company will raise the monthly price of its ad-free plans Disney+ and Hulu plans by more than 20%.
The Disney+ ad-free plan will rise by 27% to $13.99 a month in the US, up from $10.99. That's double the $6.99 monthly cost Disney charged for the service when it first launched in 2019.
Hulu's ad-free plan will increase by $3 a month, or 20%, to $17.99 a month. The ad-supported tiers for both services will remain at $7.99 each.
The price hikes come amid Disney's continued efforts to slash $5.5 billion in costs this year.
The monthly prices of its two Hulu live TV packages will also increase by $7 each for both the ad-free plan and the ad-supported offering. ESPN+ will go up by $1 to $10.99 a month.
Additionally, Disney announced that starting September 6 subscribers in the US will have access to a new ad-free bundled subscription featuring the ad-free Disney+ and Hulu services for $19.99 a month.
Of course they are. Netflix's password-sharing crackdown was a success and raised their subscriber numbers. They've proven that people will by and large put up with it despite the backlash.
Cat's out of the bag. Expect all other platforms to follow suit.
On the other hand, it caused me to rediscover the high seas. But I guess they think it's worth it. Squeeze your users more as we just went through record inflation levels. Perfect. Great idea, suits.
Before Netflix took hold, piracy was extremely accessible.
Even the less tecy savvy could easily download a client and there were numerous websites with ease to multiple files. Google search was throwing out torrent files in the hundreds.
Now since Netflix, that activity had died down and people wanted the convenience of being able to stream anywhere and ease of access. Piracy became limited to those that only really want to do it.
Now if these activities push it, the floodgates may reopen and people may start coming up with even easier ways to pirate. Kodi for example becoming super easy to access.