Disney+ will begin their crackdown on password-sharing outside one household on November 1, 2023, in Canada.
Disney+ Password-Sharing Crackdown
Canadian Disney+ subscribers received emails on Wednesday informing them that password-sharing was no longer allowed.
“Unless otherwise permitted by your service tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household. If we determine that you have violated this agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this agreement.”
The crackdown was initially announced during The Walt Disney Company’s Q3 earnings call in August. During the quarter, direct-to-consumer revenues increased 9% while the operating loss almost broke even. Disney+ subscribers dropped to 146.1 million, below the 154.8 million goal, though core members of the service rose by 1%.
CEO Bob Iger said preventing password-sharing was one of many tactics that would improve financial performance for Disney+.
The crackdown is beginning in Canada but will likely come to the U.S. soon.
Disney+ Subscriber Growth & Loss
Earlier this month, the Orange County Register reported that Disney expects to fall short of their original 2024 Disney+ subscriber goal. Disney+ launched in November 2019 and in 2020, Disney predicted they would have between 230 million and 260 million subscribers by September 2024. Now-former CEO Bob Chapek lowered the goal slightly in 2022, to between 215 million and 245 million subscribers. When Iger returned, he said they would no longer share subscriber goals, but it’s clear Disney+ isn’t reaching any of their original targets.
Subscriber growth initially slowed in 2021 due to a price increase and less new content. But it wasn’t until early 2023 that Disney+ actually lost subscribers. They lost 2.4 million in the quarter, followed by another 4 million in Q2. In Q3, they lost 11.7 million, leaving them at 146.1 million subscribers total.
The subscribers have mostly been lost from Disney+ Hotstar, a version of the streaming service offered in India and parts of Southeast Asia. In 2022, Disney lost streaming rights to Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches, leading to Disney+ Hotstar alone losing 3.8 million subscribers in 2023’s Q1 and 4.6 million subscribers in Q2. But Disney+ lost subscribers in the U.S. and Canada too, likely due to continued price increases.
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