Disney Plus appears to be looking into cracking down on password sharing, according to Disney CEO Bob Iger (via The Verge.) Details of the potential change were announced briefly during Disney’s most recent earnings call on August 9.
Iger says the plan is to start changing some of the policies later this year. But that doesn’t mean subscribers will start seeing the changes take affect at that time. Disney does plan to update subscriber agreements with “additional terms” and changes to sharing policies in 2023. But It won’t be looking to monetize those changes until sometime in 2024. “We will look to roll out tactics to drive monetization in 2024” Iger says.
What does this mean for subscribers? Well for the moment it’s tough to say. Disney is simply exploring the idea of cracking down on password sharing for Disney Plus right now. And for the time being it hasn’t laid out any plans for how it would work or when it would be rolled out. But the changes do seem inevitable. Iger reported that the service did see a decrease in subscribers, although slightly. And he also mentioned that the number of accounts sharing passwords was “significant.” Which it sounds like may have negatively impacted Disney’s bottom line for subscriber numbers.
Disney can already monitor password sharing
If you’re asking yourself how Disney will know, Iger says the company already has the “technical capabilities” to monitor sign-ins. So it’s already equipped to tell who is sharing passwords and who isn’t. All that’s left for Disney to do is to start implementing the policy changes.
As mentioned though there’s no way of knowing for now when exactly that happens. Or how the end results will look. When Netflix rolled out password sharing changes, it offered subscribers a way to add people onto the account for use outside the home network. Disney may or may not choose to do the same thing. Either way, Disney’s intention here is likely to increase subscribers. And it already knows this can be an affective method thanks to Netflix. As the company reported that its password sharing crackdown worked.
2023-08-11 15:07:58