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Television Businesses

Disney+ Lost 700,000 Subscribers From October-December 2024 80

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 million subscribers; it now has 53.6 million. All told, the company's streaming business was profitable for its third-straight quarter. So it wasn't all bad -- or unexpected. "Our results this quarter demonstrate Disney's creative and financial strength as we advanced the strategic initiatives set in motion over the past two years," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "In fiscal Q1 we saw outstanding box office performance from our studios, which had the top three movies of 2024; we further improved the profitability of our Entertainment DTC streaming businesses; we took an important step to advance ESPN's digital strategy by adding an ESPN tile on Disney+; and our Experiences segment demonstrated its enduring appeal as we continue investing strategically across the globe. Overall, this quarter proved to be a strong start to the fiscal year, and we remain confident in our strategy for continued growth."
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Disney+ Lost 700,000 Subscribers From October-December 2024 More

Disney+ Lost 700,000 Subscribers From October-December 2024

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  • Branding problem (Score:3)

    by cowdung ( 702933 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:14PM (#65145763)

    I see ads of Facebook of some horror flick on Disney+.

    Disney used to mean "kid friendly." That's why they had brands like Miramax and Marvel for other sorts of movies.

    But now they are just mixing it all and it must affect their brand.

    • I'm fairly certain the streaming app has a ratings filter in the parental control settings. Sure, someone will probably chime in with the tired old refrain that Disney has gone "woke" and is now so full of inappropriate (from their perspective) all-ages content, that they wouldn't let their kids have access to the service at all.

      As much as I hate agreeing with those folks, Disney probably should offer some form of parental control that is more granular, so if you're a parent who really does want your preci

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by N1AK ( 864906 )
        Do we really want to encourage a world where users can just filter out the existence of other types of people they don't approve of? Once they've sorted out blocking the concept of gay people would you also advocate them adding buttons to filter out black people, asians, mixed race relationships, women in positions of leadership, disabled people so that people who want to discriminate against them can do so more easily as well?

        • Oh for chrissakes. Absolutely no-one is suggesting a 'no-gay filter' or 'no-black filter'. The OP is talking about parental controls, which have been a thing for decades now. The idea is to filter out media that contains violent or sexual scenes that you don't want very young children to see. And I'm very sympathetic to any parents who want to keep their children out of the absolute cesspit that the culture war has become, at least for as long as possible.

          Now I'm very much in two minds when it comes to this

          • Oh for chrissakes. Absolutely no-one is suggesting a 'no-gay filter' or 'no-black filter'

            Other than literally the poster one layer up from your reply?:

            Disney probably should offer some form of parental control that is more granular, so if you're a parent who really does want your precious little rug rat to be sheltered from such concepts as "gay people exist", filtering out LGBTQ+ content should be an option.

            • That's probably just the usual hyperbole, that people literally do not want their children to know that gay people exist because they're all bigots and nazis and have a shrine to Goebbels in their bedroom or whatever. Rather than, the 'LGBTQetc' content is often very political and people will want to keep children who at a young age lack the capacity to fully appreciate all the political nuances away from programming which may try to brainwash them into any particular ideology. From reading some of the disc

              • You write:

                Absolutely no-one is suggesting a 'no-gay filter' or 'no-black filter'

                And then go on to suggest relegating "LGBTQetc content" to a ratings category so that it's easier to prevent children from viewing? That's just a "no-gay filter" with extra steps.

              • At that point you might as well just hand-pick what your kids are watching, instead of asking a big corporation to do it for you. If your kid is 5 years old, they shouldn't be consuming videos unsupervised anyway.

                When I was a little kid I was only allowed to watch PBS, and only up to one hour per day. It wasn't unusual back then to have parental restrictions like that.

        • Do we really want to encourage a world where users can just filter out the existence of other types of people they don't approve of?

          Yes, absolutely. Hell yes. Why shouldn't people be able filter by their preferences? If people have dating preferences against your pet groups are you gonna pillory them, too? Must we all date according to YOUR preferences, too? People are allowed to dislike or even hate those they choose. You don't get to choose for them and revealing that you'd like to only puts you in a very large group of censors and nanny-goats like you.

          would you also advocate them adding buttons to filter out black people, asians, mixed race relationships, women in positions of leadership, disabled people so that people who want to discriminate against them can do so more easily as well?

          Could they? Gee, that'd be awfully convenient.

          See, you don't get to determine oth

        • TikTok basically already does something similar on an opt-in basis. You choose your interests and it recommends the kind of content you're likely to be interested in, while filtering out what you're not. No one sincerely believes that it's some kind of discriminatory thing to filter out entertainment you're not interested in seeing or prefer that your kids not be exposed to. Freedom of expression has always been about a right to speak to those who wish to hear it, and it's not censorship when people will

      • As much as I hate agreeing with those folks, Disney probably should offer some form of parental control that is more granular, so if you're a parent who really does want your precious little rug rat to be sheltered from such concepts as "gay people exist", filtering out LGBTQ+ content should be an option. Heck, while we're at it maybe add some sort of AI remastering feature to let you completely choose what levels of violence you're comfortable with, like taking all the guns out of a movie, or adding more of them. [youtube.com] Just imagine the possibilities!

        Just use a VPN to set your location to China or the Middle East and poof! No more black people or gay/lesbian content!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Does their app have a child mode?

      Google does this with Android TV as well. The home page is a mix of kids and adult titles. Moana 2 next to Terrifier.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        no it does not. i have Disney+ only for kids shows and movies. all my kids nephews and nieces are under 8. i have no interest in Disney+ as an PG-13/R movie service. I've watched some of the star wars stuff they have and sadly wasn't that impressed, never finished mandalorian or andor

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

          no it does not. i have Disney+ only for kids shows and movies. all my kids nephews and nieces are under 8. i have no interest in Disney+ as an PG-13/R movie service.

          I don't know why you're claiming this, because it absolutely, positively has a kid mode with a different interface with larger tiles for early/non-readers and only age appropriate content exposed. Just because the parents of your nieces and nephews haven't bothered to set that up for their kids doesn't mean it isn't there.

    • Yeah, I’d say that’s a branding problem alright.

      No one has a clue what a “kid” is anymore. Not even Disney.

    • That's why Touchstone [wikipedia.org] came into being: to promote edgy PG-13 to R-rated, "non-Disney family" movies like "The Black Hole," which I still think is underrated.

  • Price hikes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by olsmeister ( 1488789 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:15PM (#65145767)
    Recent price hikes and the addition of ads in content that used to be ad-free are prompting a lot of people to take a second look at how many streaming services they subscribe to. Every time I turn around, another one is announcing a price hike.

    • Netflix did a price hike recently too, so there's probably a bit of churn between services. There's almost always someone in the comments section who has to share that they rotate through different services after they're done watching the latest seasons of the previous streaming service's exclusives.

      Disney+ might also not have the same kind of luck that Netflix did with cracking down on password sharing. It's entirely possible some of their subscribers really did make good on cancelling the service after

      • Disney+ might also not have the same kind of luck that Netflix did with cracking down on password sharing. It's entirely possible some of their subscribers really did make good on cancelling the service after they could no longer share it with friends or family members outside of the same household.

        You got to stop with this propaganda, reason attributing nonsense that netflix fed you.

        5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same

        At the same time, though the company is not gaining as many new subscribers monthly

        It worked so well they are just going to stop telling you about it in the future.

        Netflix announced Thursday that it plans to stop sharing its quarterly subscriber numbers in 2025.

    • Re:Price hikes (Score:5, Informative)

      by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @10:03PM (#65145823)
      I agree. It certainly is doing so for me.

      Prices keep going up, and ads are being added.

      It's literally the trajectory cable television took. Turns out that in the end, Corpos are gonna Corpo.
      • I also have noticed a proliferation of apps lately that let people identify and manage their subscriptions, and even find duplicates and help cancel unwanted ones. I wonder if that is having an impact on subscriber counts for these streaming services. Their favorite customer is probably someone who has set up autopay, and then forgotten they have the service.

        • I wonder if that is having an impact on subscriber counts for these streaming services.

          I hope so.

          Unfortunately, instead of trying to get the customers they lost back, they'll just find a way to squeeze who's left to make up the difference, plus the growth required to keep the stock afloat.

      • It was always obvious to me - and I'm not claiming to be a genius or a prophet. They all wanted their vertical integration and to take over the entire market as the sole distributor of content.

        At this point, I'm kind of surprised that we haven't seen independent studios going the standard e-commerce route. "Come to our website, pay to download and keep our movies / episodes for a reasonable price that goes direct to us!"

        With a little bit of effort (that yes, would increase costs and thus prices), you coul

        • I agree entirely, and I think that is likely the final form of that kind of entertainment.
          Prices would need to move considerably from the current digital rental prices, though.

          • I don't participate in that market so I don't know what the current rates are like, but I'm betting you could actually make a LOT more money selling people their own permanent copy than you can letting them access it via a streaming service with the attendant subscription.

            You can buy Friends (admittedly something like 30 years old now) for ~$0.70/hr. I think for newer stuff you could easily charge a full buck, double that for something reasonably popular. And you might have to have a yet higher premium

            • $0.70/hr seems reasonable when context is ignored, but what is the current price of Friends?
              If on Netflix, for example, its cost would be ~$0.02/hr without ads.
              At that point, paying for streaming becomes attractive again, since I can now stream 35 shows for the price of 1.

              • what is the current price of Friends?

                In my region, the most basic boxed DVD set is priced 80 euros in a reputed physical store. Assuming 236 episodes of 22 minutes, that gives 0.925 €/h. The Blu-ray 4K edition goes for 220 €, or 2.5 €/h (I assume it includes an additional 100-minutes episode).

                • Not sure physical copy is good comparison.
                  But that does kind of indicate what's going on here- their digital purchases are priced comparatively to the price of their physical ones.
                  While on a streaming service, you get access to it for a few pennies per hour.

                  • I compared to physical because the original proposal was full ownership, which wouldn't be sold for pennies per hour. We can account for the price of physical media and distribution though the public price of blank DVDs; of which a box cost 10 dollars online or 25 € in my local retail.

                    • I compared to physical because the original proposal was full ownership, which wouldn't be sold for pennies per hour.

                      Agreed, and nor should it.

                      But to pick some nits, it's not full ownership- ever; it's at best "a perpetual license to use this digital copy".
                      And clearly the value of the content is nowhere near the value of the physical copy, if it can be streamed in the same format that you've receive a digital copy in- for pennies/h.

                      I don't disagree with your logic. I disagree with them adopting it, though.

        • With a little bit of effort (that yes, would increase costs and thus prices), you could custom-encode for every purchase and embed a unique fingerprint in each one so anyone sharing their copy is someone you can find in very short order.

          Eeeh. That would have some pretty bad privacy implications. Also, let's say your individually encoded copy ends up on the torrents somehow (maybe lost or stolen laptop, or kids). I can easily see the rights holders suing you for tens or hundreds of millions, because of course they will count every download as a lost sale at full price.

          • That's not a privacy issue, that's a legal issue... the same kind of issue as you get when your car is stolen and used in a crime.

            However, I would expect it wouldn't be much of an issue at all because we're talking about offering at a reasonable price with an easy distribution method; the best way to combat piracy is to not treat your customers like an ATM holding money you think is already yours. It's not all that difficult for someone with the technical know-how to rip video from NetFlix, yet for the mos

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by unrtst ( 777550 )

            Also, let's say your individually encoded copy ends up on the torrents somehow (maybe lost or stolen laptop, or kids). I can easily see the rights holders suing you for tens or hundreds of millions, because of course they will count every download as a lost sale at full price.

            GOOD! That would be a big improvement over them suing the service, and they (the court) could easily trace such an event and act accordingly. They've already got the DRM garbage in every file; Why doesn't that do this one useful thing that would actually identify the culprit? ... none of that is meant to imply that a watermark would be effective. But if/when it were, I don't see the privacy issues. It might even allow for resale rights (IE: why can't I sell my digital copy of Friends to someone else?)

      • Let's not be surprised here, were you expecting companies to subsidize overwhelming torrents of content for ludicrously cheap prices forever?
        • Netflix operates at a 20% profit margin.

          That would have made me blow my load when I managed restaurants in my early 20s.

          Does your asshole hurt less when you pretend like you're getting a good deal? Asking for a friend.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There just isn't enough good content to warrant maintaining a subscription. Most of the Star Wars and Marvel stuff is just bad, and the few good things they have put out 12 episodes a year.

        Okay they have a big back catalogue, but I have better things to do than re-watch old stuff most of the time.

        • Sadly, I'm inclined to agree.
          They had a few good runs littered amongst the chaff, but it's been the minority.
          It's definitely not worth the monthly payment they ask.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The only things I'm really looking forward to are a second series of Andor and maybe Daredevil. But I have a nasty feeling that Daredevil will be a shadow of its former Netflix self.

            • Hah. I'm in exactly the same boat. Andor S1 was nothing short of fucking incredible.
              I'm really, really looking forward to S2.

              I want to look forward to Daredevil, but I just have this overwhelming gut feeling they're going to fucking ruin it.

        • There just isn't enough good content to warrant maintaining a subscription. Most of the Star Wars and Marvel stuff is just bad, and the few good things they have put out 12 episodes a year.

          Okay they have a big back catalogue, but I have better things to do than re-watch old stuff most of the time.

          Informative or insightful, take your pick mods.

          While some folks go on about Disney's "wokeness", the real problem IMO is that the stories and writing are just bad at present.

          Writers who can't write, directors who are incompetent, and the idiocy of many screenings and reshoots to attempt to come op with a compelling presentation, but eventually making a disjointed and marginal product. And makes for a very expensive poor product.

          What passes for story lines seems to be turning previous good guys into

          • Then making Harvey Weinstein's staff assistant into a first time director - just odd. And completely unsurprising results result

            I am sure many have speculated the reasons why she might have been selected...did she take this role in lieu of a major payout and a willingness to stay quiet about certain things...?

            All that said, she did a good job for a first time director. The script was just terrible, don't know if that was her fault or not, but as the old adage in film goes, it's the script, it's the script, it's the script, stupid.

    • Agree about expense. I have the 3-service bundle for $32.95 and am in a pretty continuous evaluation mode of whether I think that is worth it or not.

      I have been skeptical from the start of the "cord cutting" craze while replacing the cable with individual services such as this, Paramount, NetFlix, etc. I was suspicious I'd eventually be right back to my near-$300-per-month cable bill, but so far it looks like the streamers will have to try harder to get there. I think I'm in the low-100's including the

  • Who? (Score:2)

    by Temkin ( 112574 )

    (foreshadowing...)

    Who? ...

    Never heard of them...

    (/foreshadowing)

  • That the Biden admin knew would get cancelled when Trump's team came in

  • One ad away (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Varenthos ( 4164987 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @11:42PM (#65145951)
    I'm one ad away from dropping Disney+.

    I subscribe to the ad-free tier, but recently they've announced that even the ad-free tier may start seeing ads. I'm just going to keep watching stuff on Disney+, and the first time I see an ad when I'm subscribed to ad-free, I'm gone! They're already pushing their luck with the price hikes and charging more for ad-free. If I start seeing ads, that's it.

  • While they lost subscribers, this was offset by the number of subscribers that stayed and kept paying through the price hike. So, yeah, "lost subscribers = bad", but from a business standpoint they gained somewhere near $1B in recurring revenue from the price hikes. The loss of these customers is not likely to be a deterrent.

    Expect the DIS stock to rise in the coming months.

  • After a month, run out of stuff to watch.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bsdetector101 ( 6345122 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @05:40AM (#65146281)
    Son had a free subscription for a year and shared with me. After a while, just ran out of things you want to watch or old stuff you might have seen already. Wasn't worth paying for on a long term. IF you have kids.... But NOT all their content is available !
    • They have altered some content to be PC correct or woke....no thanks !!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by N1AK ( 864906 )
        Figures that someone this obsessed with woke is enough to not understand the redundancy in saying PC correct.

        • Figures that someone this obsessed with woke is enough to not understand the redundancy in saying PC correct.

          Disney just have their own bigotry. Can you tell us exactly why it is a good idea to refuse to hire little people actors in a movie where the little people in the story were the heroes?

          Sounds like dwarphobia and bigotry to me. And how the so called "woke" agenda is actually based more on certain groups that are excluded while mentally masturbating about inclusivity. Just more bigotry and prejudice. I mean who are you going to believe, "The Message" or your lying eyes?

    • I think the service would mostly be useful to somebody with real little kids who tend to watch the same crap over and over and over and over and over again.

      At any rate I'm a subscriber but that's because I've been getting it for free due to a combination of bundling and a deal with my credit card. When that goes away I'm going to cancel it. So a lot of those 700,000 subscribers are just people getting it for free or almost free
      • You don't need a subscription service for that. Just get a used DVD of whatever the kid wants to watch on repeat for the next three months and save yourself $50.

        Anything worth watching again is worth owning in my opinion. Most stuff isn't even worth watching once (hardly a recent phenomena as some might claim) and a streaming service survives on have a wide variety of cheap crap in much the same way a buffet is operated.

  • When it started, it was a no-brainer to subscribe. Now it's a no-brainer to cancel. I didn't watch it much in recent times. Finished Agatha, and won't start any other series. A few things I was watching you can get cheap on DVD on eBay anyway.

  • "ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period"

    The most popular sport in the USA by far is football, so it's not a surprise that a lot of subscribers who only watch football unsubscribe after the football season. I'm guessing that ESPN+ subscriptions will rise right before this fall's football season.

  • Mickey Mouse needs to be beheaded and his head put on a pike.

  • it's American so fuck em.. Netflix gone and Disney gone have had Netflix since around 2011 when shows were quite limited in Canada.

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