Disney says it’s ‘heartened’ by results of Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown

Disney has expressed excitement over Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown.

In a May 7th earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company is “quite bullish” about the opportunities presented by such a move, via The Hollywood Reporter. “Obviously, we’re heartened by the results that Netflix has delivered in their password-sharing initiative and believe that will be one of the contributors to growth, as [CFO Hugh Johnston] noted going forward,” said Iger.

While Netflix’s terms of service had always prohibited password-sharing, the company didn’t formally start enforcing it until February 2023. At that time, subscribers had to begin paying $7.99/month to let people outside of their households access their accounts. Netflix has previously said 100 million users were sharing accounts, so the crackdown is intended to turn at least some of those people into subscribers.

However, many people reported in the following months that others who were using their accounts hadn’t yet been kicked out. (For what it’s worth, my grandparents were finally locked out of my Netflix account last month, more than one year after the streamer said it was cracking down on the practice. As a result, I was forced to pay $7.99/month to allow them to continue using my account.)

Despite the seemingly inconsistent enforcement of the policy, it would seem that the mere threat of the crackdown has led more users to subscribe. Last year, the company said it was “pleased with the results” of its password-sharing crackdown in Canada and that subscriber growth increased following the announcement. It later expanded the crackdown to the U.S. and other international markets.

Therefore, Disney is clearly encouraged by all of this. For context, Bloomsberg Intelligence estimated that Disney+ has 50 million password borrowers out of over 150 million subscribers, 20 million of whom could be converted into paying members following a crackdown.

Disney also officially began cracking down on password-sharing in Canada in November, although it’s unclear if it’s actually locked anyone out of their accounts. (None of the MobileSyrup team has been affected yet.) Disney may be following Netflix’s suit and testing the waters before more heavily enforcing the account restriction.

In the earnings call, Disney said it will expand the crackdown to the U.S. in June and other markets in September, meaning they’ll have to pay an additional fee to share their accounts. However, pricing has yet to be confirmed.

Are you a Netflix or Disney+ user and have been locked out of free password sharing? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Disney

Source: The Hollywood Reporter