Disney Fans Turning to Crime to Avoid Raising Prices

Are we so disillusioned with Disney? Increasingly, fans prefer to pirate their shows and movies instead of paying the Mouse House for content.

The Walt Disney Company name is synonymous with innovation and trend-setting. For decades, the company has been at the forefront of the entertainment field and has made its name, producing some of the best films globally. However, with increased prices and a perceived reduction in quality in recent years, fans have decided to choose piracy over paying the massive corporation.

Disney+ Loses Subscribers to Piracy 

2023 saw a surge in piracy, with visits to those sites topping at 229 billion. Streaming was supposed to be the panacea to this problem. However, it doesn’t seem to have been the solution studios might have hoped for.

When Netflix first came on the scene, it was revolutionary, offering thousands of movies and shows for a relatively low monthly fee. But now, that’s changing, with these companies losing paid subscribers.

Per Quartz, “Disney+ and Hulu are steadily losing customers, with paid subscriptions down by as much as 7% by the end of the year.”

Here are the numbers to show the increase in piracy site visits:

MUSO recorded 229.4 billion visits to piracy websites in 2023, an increase of 6.7% from the previous year. TV accounted for most of the visits at 103.9 billion, up 4% from 2022. It was followed by film at 29.6 billion visits, an increase of about 7%. Music piracy saw the highest growth in media pilfering, a 13% increase with 17.1 billion visits in 2023.

Why is This Happening?

“It’s hard to get people to pay for something that they know they can get for free,” said Michael D. Smith, a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

In addition, in the case of Disney+ or Hulu, with crackdowns on password sharing combined with constant price rises, fans are less convinced that the streaming service is affordable and worth the money they have to pay for it.

MUSO adds another insight, which is that exclusive access to shows—while great business deals for studios—is getting exhausting for fans who are tired of paying high fees just to watch one show. As a consequence, they’re turning to piracy more and more.

Interestingly, MUSO also adds that piracy is only likely to increase with time, especially as piracy sites become more user-friendly with time. “Piracy audiences, like legal audiences, have continued to adapt and for most media sectors grow,” the report wrote.

Seeing as lowering prices won’t help companies and isn’t a sound business strategy, perhaps blocking access to piracy sites is the only way forward.

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