Forbes: Promising Investors, Disney Plus to Raise Prices Once More Content Arrive

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Disney Plus has had a strange launch period, as its entire existence has more or less been during the pandemic, which CEO Bob Chapek says has caused production problems all across the service.

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But with that starting to settle, in an earnings call, Chapek says both that more content is coming, and so are higher prices for Disney Plus as a result, which is currently $8 a month.

Here’s what Chapek said on the call to investors:

“Plus, in all fairness, our own recognition that we needed to essentially double our production output. You put those two things together, and we certainly have less content than we want. But as we’ve said over the last few earnings calls, that will rectify itself in the second half of this year. We’ve already reached one of our two goals. One of the goals was to go ahead and ensure that we had a new title every week, and we’ve achieved that.”

“By 2023, we want to get to a steady-state, which is even higher than we have right now. And I think that will give us the impetus to increase that price/value relationship even higher and then have the flexibility if we were to so choose to then look at price increases on our service. But it’s all about content, content, content.”

Chapek says they will effectively double content output, and that will raise the “price/value” relationship so that they can justify higher prices. Competition like Netflix, for instance, is now $20 a month for its highest tier after a long-running string of price increases. HBO Max is $15 a month. It’s clear Disney wants Plus to move in that direction.

There may be one caveat here, however, as not too long ago it was reported that Disney is also launching a cheaper, ad-supported tier. However, rather than that tier being say, $5 to the normal $8, it’s possible when the price increase comes, maybe the ad-supported tier costs as much as Disney Plus does now, while ad-free Disney Plus will go to $10, $12 or $15.

There’s no exact timeline on when the price hike will happen, but the ad-supported tier is supposed to get here before the end of the year. Disney’s main goal is ramping up content production and to ensure that in addition to its vast kids library, adults are tuning in for more than just a singular Star Wars or Marvel show once a week, with weeks/month gaps in between them. But once we start getting a more steady flow of content, that’s likely when prices go up, so prepare yourself accordingly.

Via: Forbes.com