During an earnings call on Thursday, Disney CEO Bob Iger said around 60 percent of all new subscribers are choosing Disney Plus’s ad-supported plan. Meanwhile, 37 percent of total subscribers in the US are currently subscribed to the option, which has become a major revenue driver for streaming services.
“It’s not just about raising pricing,” Iger said. “It’s about moving consumers to the advertiser-supported side of the streaming platform… the pricing that we recently put into place, which is increased pricing, was actually designed to move more people in the AVOD [Advertising-based Video on Demand] direction.” Disney last raised prices across its streaming services in October.
At the same time, Disney’s streaming business saw modest subscriber growth in the US and Canada, going from 54.8 million last quarter to 56 million. Additionally, Disney has plans to roll out password sharing more broadly, as CEO Bob Iger said during an earnings call that paid-sharing just started in Latin America this week. The company’s CFO Hugh Johnston didn’t rule out the possibility of price increases in the future, either.
We certainly look to continue to increase pricing in line with the value that we’re providing to consumers. A lot of the growth that we’re seeing right now is because of the exceptional content that’s coming out of both the movie and the TV studios that are that’s obviously our proprietary content, so that’ll certainly enable us to increase pricing over time.
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