Disney+, The Walt Disney Company’s brand-new streaming platform, has already achieved a groundbreaking 10 million subscribers since launching. Disney+ will debut with content bundled from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic. Consumer demand exceeded expectations for Disney as users trying to access Disney+ for the first time felt Disney did not meet their expectations. Unfortunately, the servers could not keep up with the streaming requests, which caused the outage.
A few months ago Disney announced that Hulu was the fastest growing live TV streaming service. Now a new report from Moffett Nathanson supports that claim by reporting that Hulu recently added over 400,000 new subscribers and now has 2.7 million subscribers. This makes Hulu the largest live TV streaming service, jumping over Sling TV who just reported 2.69 million. According to this report, YouTube TV is now the 3rd largest subscription service with 1.6 million subscribers.
Since Disney made an official announcement that it now has added 10 million new subscribers since it launched. This would make Disney+ one of the fastest-growing streaming services ever. Disney+ is live! It took a village to roll out the first wave: 13 platforms, 5 countries, 5 User Interface languages, and more to come. Disney is saying that its Disney+ streaming service has had 10 million signups since yesterday’s launch. It’s unclear how many are paid. But at least one analyst thinks the company will reach its 2024 subscriber goal two years early.
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Netflix is taking on the Disney+ threat by partnering up with kids entertainment giant Nickelodeon, which will produce original content, including films and TV shows, for its streaming service. The company announced this morning it has entered into a new, multi-year output deal that will produce animated feature films and shows that will include both Nickelodeon’s well-known library of characters as well as all-new IP. The shows will be aimed at kids and families around the world
As per the reports Disney+ will reportedly launch as a Hotstar bundle in India and SE Asia in 2020. Disneyland, they generate $20Bn in total. Out of which domestic business generate $16Bn and International around $4Bn. Disneyland contributes 38% of total revenue and 45% of Operating Income. This gives Disney a free hand to spend on DTC which is “Disney+”. Disney+ will give Hotstar an advantage to play against Prime and Netflix in India.
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Disney+ content will come to India next year via Hotstar who continues to receive content from its volume deals with HBO and Showtime. Warner Media announced recently that their current volume deal partners in the UK, Germany, Italy (Sky) and Canada (Bell Media) will become the home for HBO Max Originals in those territories. If they were to follow that same strategy in India, this would lead to a service that hosts both Disney+ and HBO Max Content in the same place.
Disney Plus will be launched in India in the second half of 2020, post the Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament. However, there will be no separate app for Disney Plus as the whole catalog will be available on Hotstar. . Regarding Disney+, many people don’t realize this isn’t Disney’s first rodeo. Disney owns Hotstar, a SVOD app that was downloaded 51.6 million times in India in the past six months, compared to Netflix’s 5.9 million.
Disney built an empire through content M&A, as opposed to other companies that built it through tech M&A. Disney didn’t buy Oculus; they bought Hulu. They didn’t buy WhatsApp; they bought 21st Century Fox for $71 Billion. They didn’t buy YouTube; they bought Pixar, LucasFilms, and majority shares in Hulu. Now Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and even Facebook find themselves on the defensive today as Disney launches Disney+ for $6.99. The Walt Disney Company reaches an audience much more than kids and family. Remember, they own ESPN as well. You better believe that the numbers for Disney+ are going to be huge. With the launch of Disney+ today (even with the launch issues), they built an impressive physical and digital moat for their customers. It’s been a decade of acquisitions leading up to today. I really believe that Disney+ killed cable today.