For the first time ever, Disney+ had a net loss of subscribers at the end of last year, with millions choosing to leave the streaming service.
Since it first released, Disney+ has had a very good run. With a plethora of shows and films to watch on demand, including Marvel hits like Moon Knight and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and new Star Wars series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, the service has managed to maintain subscribers’ interest and until now, keep on growing its user base. As Variety reports, this has abruptly changed.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was added to Disney+ on 1 February - take a look at the trailer below.
In Q4 2022, Disney+ emerged with a net loss of 2.4 million subscribers. According to Variety, this has been put down to a decline in subscribers of Disney+ Hotstar. This version of Disney+ is available in India and some parts of South East Asia, and saw a drop of 3.8 million subscribers after Disney lost the streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket.
Recently, a study suggested that 93% of people subscribed to streaming services consider cancelling each month, so these cancellation figures were always a possibility. Even so, it’s a surprise to see such a sudden decline when things had been going so well for the service in the past.
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Despite the fact that a new ad-supported tier of Disney+ has been rolled out in the U.S., and the price of the ad-free version also increased, Disney CEO Bob Iger said: “We only suffered a de minimis loss of subs… and that tells us something.” Clearly, there's no plans to backpedal there, then.
With new stuff being added to the service all the time, like the aforementioned Black Panther 2, subscriber numbers are probably going to pick up again in the future.
Topics: Disney, TV And Film