Disney+ Confirms Plan to Address Account Sharing Like Netflix

Months after Netflix began cracking down on subscribers that share their log-in information with friends and family, Disney+ appears to be following in its competitor’s footsteps. During Disney’s latest earnings call on Wednesday, Disney chief Bob Iger revealed the company will update its term and services to address the sharing of passwords at some point in 2024.

“We are actively exploring ways to address account sharing, and the best options for paying subscribers to share their accounts with friends and family,” Iger said during the call. “Later this year, we will begin to update our subscriber agreements with additional terms and our sharing policies, and we will roll out tactics to drive monetization sometime in 2024.”

Outside of Iger confirming the company is “actively exploring” the idea of addressing password sharing, no further information—such as pricing or exact timelines—was unveiled during the call. On the same call, Iger also revealed both Disney+ and Hulu will be increasing their monthly subscription prices in the coming months.

“We already have the technical capability to monitor much of this (password sharing). And I am not going to give you a specific number except to say that it’s significant. But we don’t know of course is, as we get to work on this, how much of the password sharing, as we basically eliminate it, will convert to growth in subs,” Iger continued. “Obviously, we believe there will be some but we’re not speculating. What we are saying though, is that in calendar ’24, we’re going to get at this issue. And so while it is likely you’ll see some impact in calendar ’24. It’s possible that we won’t be completed or the work will not be completed within the calendar year, but we certainly have established this as a real priority, and we actually think that there’s an opportunity here to help us grow our business.”

Why did Netflix stop password sharing?

Though virtually all streamers free allowed password sharing for years, Netflix became the first major streamer to push more people to subscribe to the service by no longer allowing the use of the same account between households.

“Now that we’ve launched paid sharing broadly, we have increased confidence in our financial outlook,” a Netflix shareholder letter distributed last month read. “We expect revenue growth will accelerate in the second half of 2023 as monetization grows from our most recent paid sharing launch and we expand our initiative across nearly all remaining countries plus the continued steady growth in our ad-supported plan.”

Since Netflix’s new plans have been implemented, the company has said it’s added five million new subscribers.

“While we’ve made steady progress this year, we have more work to do to reaccelerate our growth,” the shareholder letter added. “We remain focused on: creating a steady drumbeat of must watch shows and movies; improving monetization; growing the enjoyment of our games; and investing to improve our service for members.”