Disney+ Lost A Ton Of Subscribers After The Company Raised Prices, But It Didn’t Seem To Matter For Another Streamer

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew's quartet of child protagonists: KB, Wim, Neel and Fern

(Image credit: Lucasfilm)

The world of streaming is a key part of any entertainment company’s business, which means the competition is fierce to boast having the best streaming service. For Disney, which has Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ all on offer, it’s all the more important. So you'd think losing 700,000 Disney+ subscriptions in the last quarter would be potentially devastating. However, the mega-corp is still quite content with that result, because while its namesake platform lost subscribers, Hulu gained a lot more, so on balance things are fine.

The Walt Disney Company released its Q1 numbers for fiscal year 2025 this morning and along with it came the news that Disney+ and ESPN+ each lost 700,000 subscribers last quarter, but Hulu gained 1.6 million, which is an overall win for the parent company. During Disney's Q1 earnings call Bob Iger revealed that following last quarter’s price increase, the company fully expected to lose subscribers, and actually expected to lose more, so the current numbers are seen as positive. He explained…

We actually are very pleased with where we are sub-wise, with Disney+ and Hulu. As you know we took prices up significantly, fairly recently, and expected the churn would be significantly greater. And it turned out we delivered numbers that were better than we had expected. So the combination of Disney+ and Hulu actually grew subs modestly in the quarter.

The price of a Disney+ subscription went up in mid-October 2024. An ad-supported subscription now costs $10 a month while the ad-free version costs $16. Each is also available as a bundle with Hulu and ESPN+.

Price increases on a regular basis are part of the streaming landscape, but all the platforms know this. Part of the expectation is that the increase in prices will help balance the loss of subscribers. While losing fewer subscribers than expected may seem like a weak silver lining, it certainly means Disney is making more money from their subscriber base right now than it expected to be. And streaming overall was profitable for Disney last quarter.

At the end of the day, Disney is a publicly traded company which means job one is to be profitable, and job two is to be more profitable this quarter than they were last quarter. After that, little else matters. While analysts on the earnings call had questions about the loss of subscribers, as well as the company's efforts to crack down on password sharing, nobody seemed to be particularly panicky on the topic.

Disney also prepared the financial sector with an expectation that Disney+ likely won’t see significant growth in the next quarter. Having said that, there is certainly potential for subscribers to come back when projects like Daredevil: Born Again debut and major theatrical hits like Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King make their Disney+ debut.

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CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis. Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.