Update: Disney reps have reached out with official clarity on the situation. According to the reps, the updated agreement referenced in our article was only sent to European subscribers and did not contain a change to Disney+’s right to include ads in front of select content on the service. That’s all to say, what is being reported isn’t so much a change as it is users becoming aware of a feature that Disney already reserved the rights to activate in select scenarios.
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As such, the update won’t do much to quell concerns over streaming becoming increasingly like cable but subscribers can, for now, rest easy that a significant change isn’t imminent. Original story continues below.
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Disney+ is just made a notable change to their terms and it begs the question: is streaming just becoming the same thing as cable again? The way some services are bundling together packages, it sure seems so. Consumers got tired of cable because it became expensive paying for fifty channels and only watching ten – and streaming, on the whole, offers uncut movies and TV safe from FCC regulation (South Park has long since proven that FCC language rules were merely suggestions for basic cable, but few services besides Comedy Central pushed that risky envelope). Disney+ doesn’t generally have to worry about profanity, except via its portals to Hulu, but it certainly positioned itself like a premium cable service, ad-free and uncut, more like HBO than the original basic-cable Disney Channel.
Since the Fox merger, it has also been able to offer packages with Hulu and ESPN, saving some money for fans who want all three, or even two out of the three. That was one of their few crowd-pleasing choices (as was a TikTok partnership for the kids). Many others they’ve made have not been so popular – and new change potentially coming to the service might be the most controversial yet.
Commercials for Every Disney+ Payment Tier?
Gaming news blogger Game With Dave just noticed a troubling update to his Disney+ terms of service. Moving forward, they have announced that promotional content, commercials, and sponsorships may run before and after programs, and during live content and special events. This will apply to all subscription tiers, including the premium level that was originally marketed as ad-free. There’s a decent chance many premium subscribers may change their accounts to a lower tier if they get ads anyway.
As mentioned, it’s not the first time the service has disappointed users. Previously, they revealed the service wasn’t going to be a permanent home for all Disney movies, and instead that some content would expire. Then there were the constant price raises. Bundling is nice, but if the services stayed cheap, bundles wouldn’t be needed. We may wonder how much more money Disney needs anyway; yet, the motive of any big business isn’t merely to make a profit, but to increase shareholder value every quarter. Disney+ has to keep growing revenue even after it has reached the maximum possible number of subscribers. That has led them to decisions that are going to be less popular, and they have to count on subscriber stasis, not angering people enough to make them cancel en masse, even if they’re mildly irritated. So, this latest change may be pushing it.
Disney must be taking into account that the benefits of sponsorship outweigh those potential losses, especially when they still have Marvel and Star Wars content that can’t be viewed anywhere else. Longer-term, this adjusts the consumer to the expectation that commercials are simply part of streaming services, and most of the responses to the report are wondering anew how this is better, or even any different, from the basic cable we thought we had replaced. Is VisionQuest and a second season of Ahsoka worth sitting through a couple of Snickers ads? The House of Mouse is counting on it, clearly. Though the way they snuck this possibility into the small print of their agreement suggests they wanted to be as low-key as possible with a rollout.
