- Disney Plus to Crack Down on Password Sharing Between June and September
- Subscribers will be required to pay to add members outside of their household.
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If you’ve been taking advantage of your friend’s Disney Plus account, we have bad news for you.
Starting in June, the streaming service will launch its first crackdown on password sharing, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed.
Speaking in an interview with CNBCIger said the company would soon “launch our first real foray into password sharing.”
Subscribers will have to pay for additional members outside their household, although Disney has yet to confirm how much it will cost.
This offensive will begin in “just a few countries,” but will soon be fully rolled out in September.
Disney Plus will begin cracking down on password sharing starting in June and will roll out more widely in September later this year.
The Disney Plus terms of service state that a subscription can only be used within a “household,” which refers to all people living in the primary residence.
In reality, passwords are frequently shared among friends and family far beyond the definition of Disney household.
Disney previously suggested a crackdown was imminent in February when subscribers were sent an email informing them that the terms of service were changing to make it harder to share passwords.
Speaking on an earnings call at the time, Disney CFO Hugh Johnston said: “Later this calendar year, account holders who want to allow access to people outside their household will be able to add them to their accounts for a fee. additional fee”. ‘
However, it is not yet clear how much this additional fee will be or how Disney will control whether a user is in the primary household or not.
MailOnline has contacted Disney for further clarification on how the crackdown on password sharing will be enforced.
Disney’s announcement follows Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing, which began in 2023.
Disney CEO Bob Iger (pictured) confirmed the dates from which subscribers will have to pay to add non-household members.
Netflix has launched the shared payment service, offering users the option to purchase “additional member slots” for £4.99 a month.
And while the crackdown may have been inconvenient for many, the change helped Netflix add 13 million new subscribers by the end of 2023.
Iger has previously promised that Disney’s streaming service will turn a profit by the end of this year, and stopping password sharing could be a big step toward this goal.
In the interview, Iger also expressed great admiration for how Netflix was run, saying, “Netflix is the gold standard in streaming, they’ve done a phenomenal job in many different directions.”
Disney Plus has been boosted by big hits like The Bear (pictured) but has faced huge losses due to its significant investments in new content. Disney may be hoping that stopping password sharing will help it turn a profit
This isn’t the first time Disney has emulated one of Netflix’s innovations.
In November last year, Disney Plus followed Netflix by introducing pricing ‘tiers’ with different subscription levels.
Disney Plus introduced a “Standard” tier that offers a lower price for the inclusion of ads, as well as an ad-free “Premium” subscription at more than double the price.
Subscribers in the UK can also access a slightly more expensive ad-free standard tier that doesn’t offer the ultra-HD quality of the premium tier.
In the US, Disney Plus offers bundled subscriptions that include access to sports from Hulu and ESPN.
Customers can choose from a combination of ad-supported and ad-free subscriptions for all three streaming services.