Blog: Disney+

Protectionist measures that kept the streaming wars alive are being wound back. Licenced content is back in vogue, despite streaming TV being built on exclusive shows. Competitive tensions are cooling as entertainment looks to bundle services to combat the cost-of-living crisis, and super aggregators are making it easier for consumers to switch between streaming services like linear TV channels.

2023 was supposed to be about the 100thanniversary of the Walt Disney Company and the celebration of a media major driving streaming and intellectual property (IP) innovation. Instead, it has become a year of firefighting and expectation management led by the returning CEO Bob Iger.

The streaming TV landscape is changing rapidly. Leading entertainment industry executives are questioning every aspect of the subscription video on-demand (SVOD) model in pursuit of sustainable profits.

Last week’s Q3 22 (calendar Q2 22) earnings represented a high point in Disney’s transition to streaming juggernaut. With its number of global direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscribers now higher than Netflix, the media major is way ahead of its April 2019 pre-Disney+ launch commitment of achieving 60-90 million Disney+ subscribers by FY 2024.

For the last month and a half, Disney’s Encanto has been taking the world by storm . Encanto tells the story of the magical ‘Madrigal’ family who live in the mountains of Colombia, and the animated film’s soundtrack was composed by none other than Hamilton ’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.

At its annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Disney announced that Disney+ had reached the 100 million subscriber mark in the 16 months since it first launched. For comparison, global subscription video on demand (SVOD) leader Netflix has taken 14 years to reach 203 million subscribers.

India is growing as a sporting nation, with athletes performing across different international sports outside of cricket like kabaddi, motorsports, basketball, and chess. The majority of media consumption in India’s sports industry, however, comes from the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Last week , Discovery announced it will launch discovery+, ‘the definitive non-fiction’ subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD), on January 4th, 2021. Consumers in the US can expect the largest-ever content library for a new streaming service from launch, with more than 55,000 episodes from Discovery’s iconic brands such as the BBC’s Natural History collection, A&E Networks, Group Nine and more.

A tough financial Q1 2020 was followed by an awful financial Q2 for Disney, with the media major reporting its first quarterly loss since 2001. With 35% of the entertainment conglomerate’s revenues originating from its theme parks business in 2019, the COVID-19-imposed cessation of live entertainment was always going to hit Disney disproportionately heavily.

FuboTV, the US over-the-top (OTT) internet-delivered TV service launched back in January 2015 as a soccer-centric proposition. In that time it has established itself as a niche distributor of live streams of MLS and LatAm soccer matches to US, Canadian and Spanish audiences.

The last two weeks have been dramatic for public companies in the wake of extreme investor reactions to the still unknown long-term economic impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic. However, media major Disney is in the fortunate position of launching its family-centric Disney+ streaming service in the UK on the first day of a UK national lockdown, with kids now being home-schooled and parents nervous about their financial futures particularly disposed towards the competitive pricing deals being offered for year-long subscription discounts.

With 10 million sign ups in its first day (per The Verge ),there is no doubt that Disney+ has tapped strong latent demand in what is already a highly saturated US streaming video market. What differentiates market insurgent Disney+ from incumbent Netflix is that it is trading on big individual brands, many of them decades old.