Disney is hiking all of the costs for its online streaming services on the heels of a drop in subscribers.
The entertainment company boosted subscription costs for a number of services, including Disney+ and Hulu, last October. This is the corporation’s second price rise in the past 12 months.
A new Disney+ and Hulu package with no ads is also being offered by the firm for $19.99 per month. Both services will continue to offer ad-supported versions for $7.99 per month. According to Disney, the new fees will take effect on October 12.
In the past three months, the number of domestic Disney+ subscribers in the U.S. and Canada fell from 46.3 million to 46.0 million.
Notably, Disney+Hotstar’s subscriber base fell by the most in India, from 52.9 million paid customers to 40.4 million paying users.
This was mostly caused by the company losing the digital rights to broadcast the cricket tournament known as the Indian Premier League.
However, CEO Bob Iger who returned to head the company last year urged investors not to pay attention to the Hotstar subscriber decline since it is “not a material component of our overall D2C financial results” because the service in India generates lesser income per user than the core Disney+ business.
Iger also mentioned the company’s plans to expand its ad-supported service into new nations, including Canada and Europe. In order to compete with Netflix’s identical offering, the corporation introduced the ad-fueled tier in the United States last December.
