Newsletter
Disney has started to inform customers that the price of their Disney+ bundle with Hulu and ESPN+ will be going up to $24.99 per month starting on October 12, 2023. After that date, your next bill will see the new price. Versus the current $19.99 per month price.
Keep in mind that this is for the ad-free versions of Hulu and Disney+. So if you’re using the ad-supported tiers, your price won’t be going up. However, you can save some money on the ad-free tiers, if you sign up for an annual plan before October 12. Currently, Disney+ annual plan starts at $109 for the year on the ad-free tier.
Disney isn’t the only one raising prices
Now that we’re out of the pandemic, more and more streamers are starting to raise prices on their services. This is because they are losing customers left and right, since many aren’t stuck at home all day anymore, they don’t need a lot of these streaming services. On top of that, production costs for new content are through the roof. So these streamers need to make money. Remember, ESPN just laid off thousands of people because it needed to cut costs.
Disney, however, has been raising rates pretty consistently over the past couple of years. Raising prices last November, and now again this October. Though the Disney bundle is still a really good deal, especially the ad-supported model, which is $12.99 per month. That saves you about half, each month on these three services. Of course, if you want to do without ESPN, it’s even cheaper at $9.99. And since Disney+ is already $7.99 per month, that’s basically $2 more for Hulu, which is a steal, to be honest.
The problem for streamers is that, unlike cable, it’s very easy to subscribe and unsubscribe from services. Customers don’t need to call in and cancel and then be talked into keeping their service with some sort of fake discount, like cable companies do. So keeping subscribers around long term is getting harder and harder.