By Editor
Netflix is reportedly considering a price increase for its ad-free service to offset revenue losses incurred during the Hollywood actor strike.
The streaming giant is said to be planning this price hike a ‘few months’ after the strike concludes, which could happen as early as this month.
Currently, the Standard ad-free plan is priced at $15.49 per month, while the Premium plan costs $19.99.
The strike, initiated by a union representing over 15,000 television and movie actors, began in July, with demands for better pay and residual payments from streaming services.
Netflix, along with other streaming platforms, has been hit hard by the strike, resulting in delays for popular shows like ‘Stranger Things,’ now expected to be released in 2025.
The impact has also been felt by other streaming services, such as HBO postponing ‘The Last of Us’ and Hulu pushing back ‘A Handmaid’s Tale.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to Netflix for comments on this development.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the price increase is likely to roll out initially in the US and Canada.
Energy PR’s Managing Director, Findlay-Wilson, warned earlier this month that ongoing Hollywood strikes could significantly damage Netflix’s reputation. The platform has been cast as the ultimate ‘villain’ in this narrative.
The Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), representing around 160,000 actors, has been on strike since failing to reach an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) regarding concerns about residuals and the use of AI.
They followed the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which initiated their strike on May 2.
As a result of these strikes, Netflix has had to postpone at least 43 shows and movies.
It appears that the streaming platform’s customers may ultimately bear the cost of these losses.
Netflix users have already experienced a sense of ‘betrayal’ when the company prohibited password sharing in May.
Customers subscribing to standard or premium plans, priced between $15.50 and $20 per month, had the option to share their login credentials for an additional $8 per month. This represented a $2 discount compared to the company’s standard stand-alone basic plan.
Netflix didn’t disclose the specific methods used to authenticate subscriber identities or accounts but assured users that everyone within the same household could still stream TV series and movies from anywhere, be it at home, on the go, or while on vacation.
The move to prohibit password sharing had been on the horizon since Netflix announced it in 2021 as a measure to recover lost revenues. Citi Bank estimated that the company was losing approximately $6 billion annually due to password sharing.
While Netflix didn’t disclose the extent of revenue loss, it revealed in January that ‘widespread account sharing’ had surpassed 100 million viewers.
These shared passwords were used among Netflix’s 232.5 million paying subscribers worldwide, who contributed significantly to the company’s $32 billion in revenue in the previous year.
However, despite these efforts, Netflix experienced a year of sluggish subscriber growth, including its most substantial customer losses in over a decade.
Netflix referred to 2022 as a ‘challenging year’ after it reported its first subscriber decline in more than a decade, losing 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter.
Edited and posted By Aarnik
