Disney+ hits 86.8M paying users, hikes monthly subscription fee

Disney+ has grown to 86.8 million paying subscribers, an increase of 13 million in the two months since it last reported user numbers.

CEO Bob Chapek announced the new subscriber counts during the company's virtual investor presentation on Thursday. The updated count represents new launches in Latin America, including the critical region of Brazil.

The Disney streaming service last reported subscriber numbers in November, when it announced that it had 73.7 million paying subscribers as of Oct. 3, 2020 — a full year after it launched. In August, it said it had 57.5 million subscribers, just a few months earlier.

Disney chairman of international operations Rebecca Campbell said about 30% of the 86.8 million subscribers comes from Disney+ Hotstar in India.

Disney+ is no stranger to surges in user growth. From the end of March to early April, the streaming service gained about 16.5 million paying subscribers in just 10 days. It also famously gained 10 million signups on its first day of service.

Although Apple launched its Apple TV+ service a few weeks before Disney+, the Cupertino tech giant's streaming service doesn't appear to have seen the same level of success.

Apple hasn't disclosed subscriber counts for Apple TV+, but says it has 585 million paying subscribers across all of its Services. Sources suggest it's off to a lackluster start. The broader Services category has remained a bright spot throughout 2020.

Update: Disney on Thursday also announced a new services bundle that includes Disney+, ESPN+ and commercial-free Hulu for $18.99 a month. The bundle comes at a $6 premium over a similar offering that presents Hulu with ads.

Further, ESPN+ subscriptions will be accessible via the Hulu app in 2021.

Disney also announced plans to raise the price of Disney+ from $6.99 to $7.99 a month starting in March 2021.

12 Comments

JazzMonkey 31 comments · 4 Years

About 3 years ago

Disney can flaunt these numbers all they want - but the still dont have Oprah.

mark fearing 439 comments · 16 Years

This is an interesting time to see what happens in the streaming world. But for Apple and Amazon it's a marketing expense. It's just marketing. For Disney, Warners ETC, it's core business. So there will always be a weird divide between these dueling POVs. Apple and Amazon are forcing the hand of Netflix and the older studios by being willing buyers, but the entire entertainment business is so radically different than it was 15 years ago that the future is impossible predict. But you have to admit, having 86 million accounts paying you monthly is better than none.

yojimbo007 1165 comments · 12 Years

Ahhh how i wish Apple had pulled the trigger and bought Disney few years back,..

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

yojimbo007 said:

Ahhh how i wish Apple had pulled the trigger and bought Disney few years back,..

I still find the idea of Apple hiring Bob Iger to run Apple TV+ an intriguing one.

cloudguy 323 comments · 4 Years

yojimbo007 said:

Ahhh how i wish Apple had pulled the trigger and bought Disney few years back,..

Except that Disney was never for sale. Neither was Nintendo. Sure there was a time when Disney was troubled but ever since the Eisner era in the late 80s when they started making hit movies again like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, then in the 90s when they bought ABC and ESPN and had even bigger hits like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King Disney has been fine (an understatement). And after the Eisner era ran its course, they got even bigger with Pixar, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Disney Princesses merchandising empire. Next was going stratospheric after buying Marvel, Star Wars, Fox and launching Disney+.

Also, even when Disney troubled in the mid to late 80s, whether Apple would have had the money to buy it is debatable. Sure stuff like "The Black Cauldron" and "The Brave Little Toaster" had then bleeding red ink all over the place, but Disney still had their studio lots, a very valuable film library, a cable network, theme parks and the merchandising empire. Even if Apple had mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy those assets, what would Apple have done with them anyway? Disney is what they are today because of a string of outstanding people - Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Lasseter, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek etc. - made excellent creative and business decisions. Without that, Disney would be MGM/UA (went bankrupt and now only exists on paper), Columbia (owned by Sony), Warner Bros (owned by AT&T), Paramount (owned by Viacom) or Universal (owned by Comcast). All of whom were much bigger entertainment companies than Disney was in the 1980s.