Disney Is Raising The Cost Of Their Streaming Services Again

Another year and another price hike to Disney’s streaming services. One of the options is not hitting $96 a month! I got to tell you, it’s not worth it.

Starting on October 17, 2024, in the first weeks of Q1 2024-2025, Disney plans to raise the costs of its services. This will also impact the ad-supported tiers.

So, how is Disney going to reach profitability? They are going to charge fewer people more money.

The new pricing will be as follows:

Disney+

-With Ads – $9.99 a month. (Currently $7.99 a month.)

-No Ads – $15.99 a month / $159.99 a year.  (Currently $13.99 a month or $139.99 annually.)

Hulu

-With Ads – $9.99 a month / $99.99 annually. (Currently $7.99 a month or $79.99 annually.)

-No Ads – $18.99 a month. (Currently $17.99 a month.)

Hulu + Live TV

-With Ads – $82.99 a month. (Currently $76.99 a month.)

-No Ads – $95.99 a month. (Currently $89.99 a month.)

ESPN+

-With Ads – $11.99 a month or $119.99 a year. (Currently $10.99 a month or $109.99 annually.)

Bundles

Duo Basic: Disney+ (With Ads), Hulu (With Ads) – $10.99 (Currently $9.99 a month.)

Duo Premium: Disney+ (No Ads), Hulu (No Ads) will remain the same at $19.99 a month.

As someone who has Hulu with Live TV (with ads), I am likely going to cancel at that price. We have been customers of Hulu since before Disney got controlling interest, and the prices have gone from about $35 a month to $95 a month in just a few years. Frankly, it isn’t worth it, and the ” ad-free” is not actually “ad-free” to begin with.

Even the pause screen has ads on it now!

Disney will lose subscribers and then squeeze the remaining ones.

This is just going to push more people to cancel, and then they will discuss how their ARPU (average revenue per user) is going up. They do this with the parks now. Attendance is down, but their ARPU is up because they gauge the customers they have left and then brag about how that is a “win.”

The other possibility is that Disney is trying to drive customers to the Disney, Hulu, Max bundle.

Or they are trying to offset the losses of people moving to the deal. Who knows. What I do know is that right now is not a good time to raise prices on customers, especially with the threat of recession and likely increase in unemployment.

Good luck with that, Bob Iger.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!