Disney Is Already Raising its Disney+ Platform Price to $8

Netflix recently announced an increase to its monthly subscriber plan and now Disney has raised toe rate of its Disney+ streaming platform to $7.99.

Disney announced at its 2020 Investor Day that the new price will begin in March of 2021. This will be the first price increase for the platform since it debuted in November of 2019.

The company has also tripled its subscribe projections for 2024. At Investor Day, Disney had revealed a four-hour long presentation that previewed many new original content coming to Disney+ as well as Hulu, and ESPN+ in the next two years.

CFO Christine McCarthy shared that Disney expects losses from Disney+ to peak in 2021. The company then expects the service to achieve profitability in 2024.

According to the company, Disney+ now has 86.8 million paying subscribers as of Dec. 2, Hulu has 38.8 million, and ESPN+ has 11.5 million.

Disney Chairman Bob Iger said back in February of 2019 that the company’s “number one priority” would be streaming.

“The question everyone has now is where to from here?” Michael Nathanson, a founder of the MoffettNathanson media research firm, said in a phone interview with the New York Times.

“We expect to see a lot more spending on content to turn Disney+ into more of an always-on service, which will increase pricing power.”

In the fourth quarter, Disney saw a loss of $710 million. This was the company’s first quarterly loss since 2001, and ended up with a net loss for the full year of $2.83 billion. Revenue was $14.71 billion and loss per share was 20 cents, both behind what analysts had been expecting.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.