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Disney Plus discount offer crashes website, adds to Apple TV+ pressure

A Disney Plus discount offer has further added to concerns about how much Apple can realistically charge for its upcoming Apple TV+ streaming video service…

CNET notes that Disney’s offer does require an upfront commitment of a three-year subscription, but provides a really good deal if you already know you want the service.

The “Founders Circle” deal essentially gives you one year of the service free if you pay for two years. It works out to be $140.97 total, or the equivalent of $3.92 a month, compared with the $7-a-month price if you don’t make a long-term commitment.

The deal proved so popular, it crashed the Disney site on which it was offered.

Disney Plus presale demand Tuesday knocked out the the Disney fan-club website offering discounted preorders for the Disney streaming service launching Nov. 12. The outage of the D23 website, which acted as the entry point for the deal, lasted about three hours.

Disney said the outage occurred because of an unexpected surge in traffic for a discounted presale offer for Disney Plus, the streaming video service that Disney is launching to compete with the likes of Netflix.

Plenty of people were already questioning the idea that Apple might be planning to charge $10 per month for Apple TV+ given Disney’s standard pricing of $7 per month.

Following a report from The Financial Times earlier today, Bloomberg has now published its own report detailing certain aspects of Apple TV+. According to the report, Apple is targeting a November launch of Apple TV+ and “weighing” a price of $9.99 per month.

We noted that seemed a hard sell as it was.

That would pitch it against Netflix and Hulu, each of which offers massively more content than we’re expecting from Apple. The only number we’ve so far heard in relation to Apple TV+ content is ‘dozens of original shows’ at launch.

Then there’s Disney+. That isn’t available yet, but we already know it will launch in November for $6.99/month.

Bringing the effective Disney Plus pricing down to $4 per month makes things even tougher for Apple.

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Jamf
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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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