Fact check: How does Disney's subscriber loss compare to other streaming services in 2025?

1. A dramatic short-term hit — how big was Disney’s drop and when?

Reporting in late September and October 2025 attributes Disney’s subscriber fall to the brief Jimmy Kimmel suspension and related customer reactions, with multiple figures circulating: a Disney source and contemporaneous reports state about 1.7 million paid cancellations between Sept. 17–23, 2025 across Disney’s streaming portfolio (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN), and another analysis puts Disney+’s one-month loss at nearly 3 million in September, a rate roughly double its average monthly attrition ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The timing is concentrated in the third week of September 2025; the company rapidly reinstated Kimmel on Sept. 23, 2025, and statements suggest the spike in cancellations was unusually front‑loaded, implying a transient but intense backlash rather than a slow, structural decline ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Placing Disney against Hulu, Netflix and the rest — absolute versus relative losses

Contemporaneous coverage indicates Hulu also suffered significant losses in that period, with one report citing about 4.1 million subscribers leaving Hulu alongside elevated churn rates — figures that, in absolute terms, exceed Disney+’s single-month headline loss in some accounts ^[3]. Industry summaries for 2025 show that Netflix, Peacock and other major services also reported material declines at different points in the year, often tied to price moves, content cycles, and platform strategy shifts; the net effect across the sector was uneven, so Disney’s headline losses are notable but not categorically unique when measured in absolute subscriber counts ^{[4] [6] [3]}.

3. Churn rates tell a different story than headline subscriber counts

Churn percentage context matters more than raw cancellations for comparing service health: Parks Associates reported a wide churn spread among 89 services in mid‑2025, with Prime Video near the low end at 8% and Discovery+ at the high end near 43%, and independent trackers placed average monthly churn in the mid‑single digits ^{[5] [7]}. Disney’s reported doubling of churn from roughly 4% to 8% during the Kimmel episode is significant as a rate shock, but that elevated percentage still sits within the broader industry churn distribution; in other words, Disney experienced an acute percent‑based spike that translated into large absolute numbers because of its scale ^{[3] [5] [7]}.

4. Structural trends and business models that mediate losses

Several 2025 analyses emphasize that platform business models — notably ad‑supported tiers, bundling, and retention strategies — shifted industry dynamics and cushion subscriber volatility. Disney’s expansion of ad‑supported offerings and pricing adjustments are cited as part of a strategy to stabilize revenue even amid subscriber swings, and some reports credit Disney+ AVoD with subscriber gains earlier in 2025 even as some SVOD tiers contracted ^{[4] [6]}. This indicates that customer churn and dollar revenue can diverge: a service can lose paying subscribers in a headline but still offset or recover value through ad revenue, tier migrations or bundling.

5. What the different narratives reveal and where uncertainty remains

The disparate figures across reports reflect different measurement windows, definitions (paid versus total cancellations), and whether counts aggregate across Disney’s brands. Sources reporting 1.7 million focus on a one‑week window and paid cancellations ^{[2] [1]}, while the nearly 3 million figure references a monthly tally and may include broader net declines ^[3]. Industry trackers show average churn easing or stabilizing by mid‑2025 even as individual services faced episodic spikes, which suggests Disney’s reputation event produced a severe but plausibly transient impact in a market already accustomed to churn and tactical subscriber movements ^{[8] [7]}.