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Disney chief Bob Iger has revealed that Disney+ will expand its fight against password sharing “in earnest” this September.
The executive didn’t outline details during a third quarter earnings call, but this would widen the initiative beyond the handful of countries that saw it this June. There’s been “no backlash” to the notifications sent out to users, Iger added.
Like Netflix, Disney+ is clamping down on password sharing to get more paying viewers and shore up revenue. Netflix’s approach, which debuted in 2023, lets an account holder pay an additional $8 per month to add a viewer who isn’t in the immediate household. That move helped improve Netflix’s bottom line.
The mention came at the same time as Disney confirmed that its overall streaming business was profitable for the first time in the quarter. While Disney+ and Hulu had turned a profit before, ESPN+ had weighed them down until now.
Before the earnings, the company revealed that it would hike prices across Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu in October. Iger wasn’t too concerned about losing viewers during the call, as he saw access to ABC News Live as “pricing leverage.”
The change in approach isn’t a shock. Disney+ launched in 2019 at a relatively low, loss-leading price as the media giant both sought to build up a subscriber base and acknowledge the relative lack of content. The library has grown substantially, however, and Disney made clear that profitability was always a goal.
Even so, the strategy could frustrate college students and others who live separate from a main account holder but have borrowed a Disney+ account to save money. They now have to either give up the service or find a way to cover the extra fees.
