Disney+ is coming off a pretty good quarter when it comes to subscribers. The streaming service is now the largest of its kind with 152.1 million subscribers worldwide. However, it looks like the House of Mouse is still struggling to make its streaming businesses profitable. Yep – businesses – Disney has more than one streaming service repertoire; Disney+ is its most widely available. Hulu, ESPN+ and Live TV are also part of the catalogue but aren’t widely available. Altogether, the businesses have seen an aggregated USD$1.1 billion in losses.
It would seem that to make the business more profitable, Disney+ will be introducing a Disney+ Premium subscription while the current tier will become an ad-supported one. You read that correct, Disney isn’t introducing a brand new tier, it’s turning its current tier into an ad-supported one. The new ad-free “Premium” tier will be priced at USD$10.99 (MYR48.85), a 37.5% increase in price. It would seem like the ad-supported tier will be screening 15- to 30-second ads for every hour of viewing which can be pretty disruptive especially if you’re watching a movie. The change will be introduced on December 8, 2022.
The change in the subscription structure has, so far, only been confirmed for the United States. Disney hasn’t commented on the change in other regions. In Malaysia, the service is currently available for MYR54.90 for 3 months that’s equivalent to USD$3.09 a month. However, it’s available under its Disney+Hotstar brand which carries a whole other catalogue including local content and licensed content under Hotstar. If the service is to follow the repricing the U.S. is doing, yearly commitment for the service would be MYR301.95 from the current MYR219.60. At which point, it may be cheaper to simply get it as part of a bundle from Astro.
That said, Disney+ isn’t the only service looking at introducing an ad-supported tier. Just recently, Netflix announced that it would be doing the same in a partnership with Microsoft. However, Netflix’s implementation of the ad-supported tier will limit the amount of content accessible to the user in its ad-supported tier. For now, Disney+ seems to not do this. However, we shall wait and see.