Disney+ discount demand crashed its preorder website. Disney said the outage occurred because of an unexpected surge in traffic for a discounted presale offer.
The “Founders Circle” deal significantly cut the price of the service if you commit to a three-year subscription.
The D23 site and the Disney Plus service itself don’t share backend technology, so one of them crashing under heavy traffic doesn’t necessarily presage bandwidth problems for the other. And the offer was mostly targeted at Disney fan-club members, the people most likely to flood the company with interest.
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.
MacDailyNews Take: All of which highlights the pressure on Apple to get the price right with Apple TV+.
$9.99/mo. for a relative smattering of content vs. under $4/mo. (or even $6.99/mo.) is a tough sell; not that Apple can’t make the sale, but it’ll be tougher.