Disney+ rolling out Perks program that sounds way crappier than just lowering prices

Ah, finally a Disney "Perks" program that rewards you with… slightly discounted Funkos?

By William Hughes | May 29, 2025 | 9:29pm

Image: Disney+

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One of the classic ways of telling when a company is trying to hoodwink you is when they start offering you more stuff, instead of lower prices. (Which would then allow you to have more money that you could spend to buy your own more stuff—at least, if our college economics courses hold true.) And oh, what “more stuff” Disney is offering with its new Disney+ and Hulu Perks programs, the former of which it rolled out in the United States today, with the latter coming in a month or two. Chances to enter a sweepstakes to go to the Freakier Friday premiere! A chance to win a cruise! A… three month free trial of CLEAR+, that thing you can use to get through airport security lines slightly faster? Fifteen percent off of Funkos? God, this is dire.

The fact that the programs are repeatedly referred to, in press materials, as “always-on” (a term pulled straight from Marketing Land) makes it clear that this is less of a rewards program and more of a series of targeted commercials, as Disney partners with companies like Adidas, Duolingo, and Loungefly to serve up its existing customers on a platter while having the cheerful gall to call it a “benefit.” Hulu’s own program, rolling out this summer, seems a little less obnoxious—you can win tickets to Lollapalooza or Comic-Con, which, hey, neat—but that mostly seems to be a factor of having fewer companies signed up for it yet. All of it, per the marketing exec quoted in the press release, is about “celebrating our viewers,” and, presumably, their love of unlocking “TIE fighter in-game TOKEN”s for that mobile Monopoly game we’re constantly getting Twitch ads about.