Disney+ Cancel Rate at 18%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 7, 10:30AM EDT

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Disney+ Cancel Rate at 18% — © Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Add to Disney’s long list of problems that Disney+ is among the most canceled streaming services based on data from Vorhaus Advisors, according to Yahoo! Finance. The study shows the rate at 18% of total subscribers. About 2,000 people over 21 were queried. The questionnaire covered three months. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)

Netflix posted numbers even worse than Disney, with a figure of 37%. However, Netflix makes money. Disney’s streaming services have lost billions of dollars since they were launched. Disney+ started in November 2019.

Disney’s streaming business grew quickly. Subscribers for Disney+ topped 150 million recently. As of the last reported quarter, that number is slipping. Disney+ was launched for $6.99, which was almost certainly too low to make a profit. Disney traded margins for growth. It has raised rates, but this could cause many subscribers to cancel. In other words, higher rates are no guarantee of better margins if cancellation rates are high.

Disney+ also has an army of competitors. Netflix and Amazon are at the top of that list. They have many more subscribers than Disney. Both companies have been in the market much longer than Disney. Due to this competition, Disney’s streaming financials will not be guaranteed to improve.
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Disney does not need another division that is in trouble.

Whether Disney has other problems is a matter of debate. Anecdotally, attendance at its U.S. theme parks has been dropping, perhaps because of high prices. Whether price reductions by Disney will help is too hard to tell.
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Certainly, its legacy businesses like ABC face the struggles that all businesses in the sector do.

Finally, strikes by actors and writers will harm Disney’s movie studios. It is a final but terrific hit.
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In the past few days, the media has attacked the succession play that brought back former CEO Bob Iger. The company’s results since he returned may show how badly he misjudged his magic.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.