Disney+ just suffered a major decline, shedding 700,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. The drop follows Disney’s recent price hikes, which increased the cost of its ad-supported tier from $7.99 to $9.99 and its ad-free subscription from $13.99 to $15.99. Alongside the price hikes, Disney also began cracking down on password sharing, implementing a “Paid Sharing” system that restricts access to a single household unless subscribers pay an additional fee.
Bob Iger via CNBC Television YouTube
Disney CEO Bob Iger tried to downplay the loss during an earnings call, stating that the subscriber churn “wasn’t as bad as expected.” He argued that the price hikes were necessary to push Disney+ toward profitability and framed the drop as a natural part of their strategy. However, with another subscriber decline already anticipated for Q2 2025, Iger’s comments come across as little more than damage control.
While Iger attempts to spin the numbers, the real question isn’t just about pricing—it’s about value.
Why should customers pay more for a streaming service that isn’t delivering must-watch content?
Disney+ Original Content is Losing the Streaming War
At its launch, Disney+ positioned itself as the home for high-quality franchise content. With exclusive Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar projects, it was supposed to be the go-to streaming service for fans of blockbuster entertainment.
That hasn’t panned out.
Take The Acolyte, for example. Disney+ hyped it as a major Star Wars series, yet it failed to make an impact. Despite accumulating 2.7 billion minutes of viewership, The Acolyte didn’t even break into the Top 10 most-streamed originals of 2024. It didn’t even come close.
(L-R): The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) and Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
The lowest-ranking show on that list, Netflix’s Love Is Blind, racked up 7.3 billion minutes—nearly three times as much as Disney+’s second most-watched show of the year. Disney’s biggest show of the year, Percy Jackson and The Olympians only garnered 3 billion minutes. That means even Disney’s very best was nothing compared to the bottom of the top tier streaming content in 2024.
If Percy Jackson and The Acolyte were Disney+’s biggest successes, that says more about the platform’s struggles than its achievements.
Even worse, The Acolyte saw a significant drop-off after its premiere. By the season finale, engagement had collapsed, making it the least-watched episode of the series.
(L-R): Teen (Joe Locke) and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL
But it’s not just Star Wars. Marvel is in just as much trouble, if not more. Agatha All Along and Echo, two of Disney+’s most high-profile releases, delivered underwhelming numbers. Agatha barely crossed 2.2 billion minutes viewed, and Echo lagged even further behind at 1.5 billion. Even Secret Invasion, one of the most widely panned Marvel projects in recent memory, managed to outperform them.
For a company that once dominated pop culture, Disney is failing to create shows that command attention.
If People Aren’t Watching, Why Would They Pay More?
Here’s the fundamental problem for Disney+: price hikes are only justifiable when customers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Right now, they clearly don’t.
The logic of raising subscription costs assumes demand is strong enough to justify it. But the numbers tell a different story. If Star Wars and Marvel—the pillars of Disney+ original content—are failing to sustain audience engagement, what reason do subscribers have to stick around?
Bob Iger | 2019 Disney Legends Awards Ceremony | D23 EXPO 2019. Photo Credit: nagi usano from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Iger insists that the price increases will make Disney+ more profitable, but profitability isn’t achievable if customers aren’t willing to pay in the first place. His statement that “churn wasn’t as bad as expected” ignores the larger issue: Disney+ isn’t just losing subscribers—it’s failing to retain them because its content isn’t compelling enough to justify the cost.
Unlike Netflix, which pumps out consistent hits across a wide variety of genres, Disney+ is mostly dependent on franchise content. But when those franchises aren’t delivering, subscribers are left asking themselves whether the service is still worth it. And as this quarter’s results show, 700,000 of them have already made that decision.
Meanwhile, Hulu—which Disney also owns—added 1.6 million new subscribers in the same period, proving that audiences are still willing to pay for streaming—just not for Disney+.
The Future of Disney+
With another drop expected in Q2, Disney needs to rethink its approach. Raising prices while delivering underwhelming content isn’t a sustainable strategy, especially when competitors like Netflix, Prime Video, and even Paramount+ are offering more compelling programming.
If Disney+ wants to remain a serious player in the streaming wars, it needs to do more than just increase prices and crack down on password sharing. It needs to give people a reason to stay subscribed. Because right now, Disney is charging more for a service that fewer and fewer people actually want.
And yet, there he is. Still the one delivering the bad news. His legacy will be the guy that made a million dollar company out of a trillion dollar one.
Iger’s legacy will be deliberately defying his fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.
A lot of those losses are, unfortunately, due to promotions coming to an end and not sheeple waking up and realizing they don’t like D+. The article doesn’t mention that D+ still has over a hundred-million subs (yet it’s still losing money, that’s how expensive running a streaming service is). That’s a lot of people just not looking at their monthly credit card bills.
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