Mike Peterson
In a coronavirus-impacted quarter, Disney eked out a profit, with Disney+ holding 57.5 million paid subscribers at the end of June 2020, less than a year after it launched.
The Disney streaming service and Apple TV+ competitor first debuted in November 2019 and quickly started amassing subscribers. It had hit 50 million paying customers by early April 2020.
During its Q3 2020 earnings report, Disney reported that it had 100 million paid subscribers across its streaming services — which includes ESPN+, Hulu, and Disney+. As of Monday, August 2, Disney had 60.5 million subscribers, CEO Bob Chapek said during the company's earnings call Tuesday.
By early May, Disney's flagship Disney+ service had 54.5 million paid subscribers. That means a growth of three million subscribers in a little over two months.
Disney+'s sustained subscriber growth has largely been spurred by coronavirus lockdowns. Amid the global health pandemic, the company's direct-to-consumer services — which includes its streaming services — was among the only segment seeing yearly growth.
Across all of its businesses, Disney reported revenue of $11.78 billion for the quarter, a bit lower than expectations of $12.37 billion, CNBC reported. Although its direct-to-consumer and international segments saw growth, its parks, experiences are products were down 85% year-over-year.
Initially, Disney set a goal of 60 million to 90 million paid global subscribers by the end of 2024. Tuesday's subscriber report means that Disney hit its goal four years early.
Apple has yet to report firm subscriber numbers for its own streaming service, though research data suggests that it hasn't the same type of tailwinds from global stay-at-home orders.
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8 Comments
The number one complaint I hear about Disney+ is that there are frustratingly large gaps in the catalogue and these are not necessarily the first or last seasons, but a random sprinkling throughout. In the last year there doesn't appear to be any significant progress made about resolving these which might indicate that the problem is due to stakeholder issues.
I feel like Disney+ will reach a point where it becomes tougher for them to gain new subscribers as it becomes harder to convince more and more people to pay for content they've already seen, or could easily see through other means such as cinema.
I remember when the unofficial slogan for iLife was "What's the point in having millions of applications on Windows, if the four I want are on the Mac." I feel this is why services such as Netflix won't suffer as badly as I had originally thought. These services have a good reputation for producing excellent content that can't be seen anywhere else. If it came down to having to choose between content I've already seen but loved, versus seeing "that new hot show", I daresay the new stuff might win - because the consumer knows they can always return to Disney+ later, or simply purchase the exact titles they want through other channels/mediums.
Disney has reached this number and the product hasn’t even hit its stride yet. Over the next little while many titles will revert back to them. and people will see the upside being able to see recent Disney releases on Disney+. Not to mention the likelihood that a year from low they will have a strong slate of original content as well. Obviously this is not a Netflix killer in the short term, but Disney is building a platform for the long haul. (it might be Quibi killer and make things difficult for other streaming services. )