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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

That means I am counted 3 or possibly even 4 times without paying a cent to Disney directly. I have an old Spotify Premium account that came with Hulu for free and now I have a Verizon Unlimited plan that includes free Disney+, ESPN+, and another Hulu subscription. Just goes to show that not all subscribers are created equal.

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Since you have the Verizon Unlimited plan, Verizon can afford to pay Disney for you (that plan, and Verizon isn't cheap).

Disney won't be being paid for stuff that is compulsorily bundled with a plan.

Disney will only being paid for stuff that's an add-on to a plan - and even then, they'll probably only get half the revenue.

Are you certain of that? Your notion seems counterintuitive to me.

> Disney won't be being paid for stuff that is compulsorily bundled with a plan.

This is untrue[1] and also just not how these deals work. Verizon is paying Disney when bundling. It may or may not be full price.

1. https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/02/02/verizons-disney-pa...

Did you actually activate all the separate subscription accounts for those partnerships? Especially the 2 Hulu free ones - if so, why?

I activated an account on each of the three services, but I would guess that Disney gets money for all four. But even if they do, Disney probably doesn't make the same revenue on these accounts than they would if they were from four independent people subscribing directly.

> That means I am counted 3 or possibly even 4 times without paying a cent to Disney directly.

The fact that you're counted several times is a relevant complaint about their published subscriber count; the fact that you don't give money directly to them isn't.

Little does OP know, a lot of businesses would take 10% of the revenue (as pass through from Verizon) on 5x the subscriber base at 20x less churn (since the subscriber has no incentive to cancel).

They are both relevant to me in assessing the true value of Disney's subscriber count.

Your slice of what is relevant might not be someone elses.

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