A 38 per cent price hike wasn’t the nightmare that many pundits expected, with the vast majority of users swallowing the increased costs.
New data from subscription-analytics firm Antenna shows that 94 per cent of subscribers to the previous ad-free Disney+ service stayed with the platform after the A$4.50 price jump.
This will come as welcome news to recently reinstated CEO Bob Iger, who told a conference there will be more price rises in the futures.
“In our zeal to grow global subscriptions, I think we were off in terms of that [previous] pricing strategy, and we’re now starting to learn more about it and to adjust accordingly,” Iger said at a Morgan Stanley conference.
“We have a lot of rationalisation to do from a pricing perspective, but that’s one path to profitability.”
The report also found that Disney+ ad-supported tier grew faster in its initial three months than ad-supported versions of Netflix.
“Disney+ launched the ad-supported product like an entertainment company. Netflix launched it like a tech company,” Antenna chief executive and co-founder Jonathan Carson said.
“With Netflix, it was a limited release, only on one of the plans, and you kind of had to search to find it. Tech companies classically release small, do a lot of testing, iterate, and then hit the gas if successful.
“Disney+ had some more sizzle, a bigger bang. It was more heavily featured, available in more product configurations, and they’re also seeing faster pick-up.”
