Streaming prices look set to increase across the board in the wake of Disney+‘s significant expansion announcement last week.
The streamer recently confirmed that it would be bringing 10 Marvel series, 10 Star Wars series, alongside a host of other new content, to fans in the next few years.
Disney’s increased spending on content will come at a cost to subscribers, with the company announcing that users will have to pay more next year, with US fans paying $1 (£0.75) more from February 23, while UK fans will go from paying £5.99 to £7.99 a month.
However, it seems that could go up even more in the future, with Bernie McTernan, a senior analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, telling CNN Business: “Increasingly streaming, in general, is taking a greater share of the consumer’s wallet.”
Disney+ UK. CREDIT: Alamy
He went on to suggest that this could have a domino effect on the rest of the industry as streamers compete, adding: “Disney increasing its content budget is a big deal for the whole industry, including Netflix. It is effectively raising the bar to compete.
“If Disney needs to spend $14 billion to $16 billion on content, then Netflix likely needs to spend well over $20 billion to achieve the same subscriber scale globally.”
Netflix announced a price increase back in October for US subscribers, with a $1 (£0.75) increase in its standard plan and $2 (£1.50) on its premium plan.
Millie Bobby Brown in ‘Stranger Things’. CREDIT: Netflix
“The pressure on Netflix to compete with content is tremendous,” added Trip Miller, a Disney investor and managing partner at Gullane Capital Partners. “Netflix lacks the cross-generational legacy content of Disney.
“Streaming is not a fad. It is here to stay,” he added. “For the consumer, the cost of doing business with, say, Disney is going up, but in return, the amount of content they will receive is increasing.”
The likes of HBO Max could also be spending a lot more, especially if it continues its strategy of releasing all of Warner Bros’s films beyond 2021, meaning that fans are likely to have to pay up more.
