Disney+ added nearly 8 million new subscribers as Netflix scrambles

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: Disney in the quarter ending April 2 added 7.9 million new subscribers to its namesake streaming service, pushing the total number of paying customers in the US and Canada to 44.4 million. For comparison, Netflix said it lost 200,000 subscribers in its most recent earnings report.

Despite the loss, Netflix maintains a significant lead over the competition with around 222 million paying customers on the books. The company expects to shed a couple million more subs in the current quarter but will still be miles ahead of everyone else. At the end of the last quarter, for example, global HBO Max and HBO subscribers totaled 76.8 million.

Disney+ now has 137.7 million subscribers globally, an increase of 33 percent year over year. Disney's other major streaming platforms, ESPN+ and Hulu, increased subscriber counts to 22.3 million and 45.6 million, respectively. Collectively, Disney's DTC services now have over 205 million subscribers.

Disney grew revenue by 23 percent even after spending $1 billion to terminate a licensing agreement with a client early and move said content to its own service. Disney didn't say which company the deal was with, but both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter believe it was likely Netflix.

Even with the growth, Disney fell short of Wall Street's forecast. Analysts were expecting revenue of $20.05 billion but Disney generated just $19.25 billion. Adjusted earnings checked in at $1.08 per share, less than the $1.19 Wall Street was anticipating.

Image credit: Midnight Oil, Mika Baumeister

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/94569-disney-added-nearly-8-million-new-subscribers-netflix.html

 

[punctualturn]

Personally, I have a couple of shows pending in Netflix, but then, I am cancelling for the first time in 10 years.

They simply priced themselves out of the market.

 

[Hexic]

When you unreasonably increase prices and then drastically reduce content at the same time - it's almost as if you're going to lose market share.

Crazy.

 

[Dimitriid]

Honestly it's probably even bigger than Disney: it's likely a zero sum game for them so it's not that they've gained 8,000,000 subs but more important for them is that Netflix lost 8,200,000

And yes I know that's not really the case as most people double dip but the idea is just to slow down and degrow competitors by intentionally withholding and sequestering their most profitable content so those 8 million that are not on Disney are a lot more likely to leave Netflix and that's the big win for them.

 

[wiyosaya]

Honestly it's probably even bigger than Disney: it's likely a zero sum game for them so it's not that they've gained 8,000,000 subs but more important for them is that Netflix lost 8,200,000

And yes I know that's not really the case as most people double dip but the idea is just to slow down and degrow competitors by intentionally withholding and sequestering their most profitable content so those 8 million that are not on Disney are a lot more likely to leave Netflix and that's the big win for them.

I don't know where you are getting Netflix's subscriber loss numbers from, but from this article

For comparison, Netflix said it lost 200,000 subscribers in its most recent earnings report.

If Netflix is misrepresenting that, they will be answering to regulators. I doubt they are, however.

In addition, as I think you, yourself, have pointed out, that number of subscribers lost is a minuscule percentage of Netflix total number of subscribers, and does not, IMO, warrant the OMG reactions that this article implies.

My bet is that Disney+ will face its own limitations in the not-too-distant future.

 

[wiyosaya]

I am calling this article clickbait. Netflix losing 200K subscribers is a trivial percentage of their subscriber base.

People are going to pick and choose their streaming services. Anyone who thinks that any streaming service can grow their subscriber base indefinitely is completely disconnected from reality, IMO.

 

[defaultluser]

When you unreasonably increase prices and then drastically reduce content at the same time - it's almost as if you're going to lose market share.

Crazy.

And yet, the same thing is going to happen to my Disney+ subscription once Disney starts charging us all enough to stop losing money on each sub

I'm more interested to see what the fallout is from adults who only signed-up for all the marvel content when they finally double prices?

Disney Plus added almost 8 million new subscribers as Netflix struggles

The company has 205 million across Plus, Hulu, and more.

www.theverge.com

Despite this, Disney Plus is actually losing the company money at a greater clip than it was before. Disney says this is thanks to higher costs for production, advertising, and technology. Those costs seem unlikely to go down, and raising prices, like Netflix did, could cut off its subscriber growth. All that put together makes it obvious why Disney is looking at creating an ad-supported tier sooner rather than later.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I sometimes hop on my brother's Disney+ to watch stuff, but I haven't been really that impressed with what they offer.

I liked The Mandalorian, but it felt a bit stretched in the second season like they were lacking ideas. I don't like the fact that they dropped Gina Carano's character, I enjoyed her character.

I'm not really a fan of the Marvel series - they're either too short (6 episodes) and feel rushed because they're trying to cram everything into that 6 episode season or they're overly boring and the story is spread too thin across, like in Wandavision (it took 5 different sessions for me to get through the first episode and 3 to get through the second episode, they were so boring, I almost gave up on the series).

How Disney has been handling the Marvel series, it doesn't give me hope for any new Marvel movies or other series they're going to be doing. I wish Netflix was left with The Punisher, Daredevil and Jessica Jones...I can't see them doing these series any justice with their current track record, if they do start them back up.

Netflix has certainly lost steam and Disney+ isn't impressing me much on their purchased IPs. I'm on the fence about keeping Netflix and I'm not interested enough in Disney+ to give them money.....

 

[Rocky4040]

This is good maybe this will force Nutflix to focus on what they do best and that is a streaming company and not a great media company that makes TV shows and just above average movies. Maybe it will make them realize that raising the subscription prices every year is a bad thing and force them to lower those prices. I am sure it means they will have to make less shows but lets be honest that is not what made them good any way.

I will say though if you look at the copy cats such as Amazon Video & Disney+ & all of the others that now offer streaming services and also make their own shows I guess when you look at it that way Nutflix does offer the best home brew movies and TV shows out of the bunch. Which is a bit strange because Disney was built on making shows & cartoons and Disney Movies and yet their content is second rate mostly except for a couple select home brew series which are decent enough. Then again they also got into the raise the sub fee's pretty quickly just like Nutflix has been doing for quite a few years now.

Amazon was the only one that I personally use that held strong and kept their prices at base levels but this year they too raised their prices slightly but at least you get other services with it as well and music services I guess. Their home brew stuff is ok but probably not on the same level as Nutflix or Disney.

I finally got rid of Nutflix a few years ago and dropped Disney after their price increase the only one left is Amazon.

 

[nodfor]

These numbers won't save them from the righteous wrath of Ron DeSantis.

 

[wiyosaya]

And yet, the same thing is going to happen to my Disney+ subscription once Disney starts charging us all enough to stop losing money on each sub

I'm more interested to see what the fallout is from adults who only signed-up for all the marvel content when they finally double prices?

Disney Plus added almost 8 million new subscribers as Netflix struggles

The company has 205 million across Plus, Hulu, and more.

www.theverge.com

Interesting. Disney is also looking at adding an ad-supported tier, too.

IMO, Disney should have been happy with licensing their content to other services like Netflix. I basically see what is going on as a trapping of their own greed, and it extends to all of the streaming services.

It would be interesting to see these secondarily sprouted streaming services like Disney+ closing and go back to licensing their content when they all finally realize that people did not decide to stream based on following the fad, but rather because people were tired of paying big bucks for content that they rarely, if ever, watched. That's why I switched from 250+ Channels of content, where I only watched 5 channels regularly, on Dish Network for $85/mo to Netflix. Even with Netflix's current subscription rate, I am still at less than 20% of what I was paying to Dish Network.

These numbers won't save them from the righteous wrath of Ron DeSantis.

Yes, that is what Ron DeSantis claims is supporting 1st Amendment Rights (as he and his supporters define them).

 

[Dimitriid]

I don't know where you are getting Netflix's subscriber loss numbers from, but from this article

That's kind of the point I was going for: I know the figure is 200,000 at this time. What I'm putting forward is that the 8 million Disney increased can be considered a decrease for Netflix at the same time because how likely is that people won't pay for 2 services (Actually a lot more than 2 probably at least 3 or 4 on average but same principles so let's assume 2) for much longer and they already got them inside Disney.

I know it probably doesn't makes any sense whatsoever to us and I wouldn't blame you but I'm trying to think like a Disney executive who's actively adversarial of competitors on a shared market so their language would reflect "We're taking away 8 million from Netflix" even if they didn't really took them away except for maybe 200,000 it's all about the potential and making their product look impressive and indestructible and such.

So it's kind of like saying "We've got up to 8,000,000 that we can potentially take away from Netflix" and the key is that taking them away from Netflix is right now more important for Disney than actually making a profit for themselves.

But like I said, this is business talk, not reality.

 

[Uncle Al]

Got Disney+ as part of the latest Hulu price increase. I was ready to drop Hulu until I spent an afternoon on Disney+ and I must say I was VERY pleasantly surprised at all the good things on there as well as the new one's that keep poping up. Disney has come a long way since the "old days" and are now worth the effort and $.

 

[Lounds]

Disney+ in the UK is really good value, basically includes all the Hulu adult stuff for the same price the US for just Disney.

 

[kenny loris]

This is bound to happen Disney offers better content and that too at much affordable price.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

This is bound to happen Disney offers better content and that too at much affordable price.

Disney has deep, deep pockets. They've got more to back their streaming business (merchandise, many IPs - such as The Simpsons, Marvel, etc, amusement parks and so on). With their IPs alone they can easily draw a crowd to join their streaming channel and they also have a strong backing of material to watch simply because of who Disney is. Disney doesn't have to pay out one cent to any other company to strike up a contract to allow their content to stream.

You have to remember that Netflix, to my knowledge, doesn't own any kind of studio other than their own. That means any movie owned by a company such as Lionsgate or Warner Bros and so on requires a contract between the two companies to allow movies/shows to be streamed off Netflix and these contracts to borrow these things are millions of dollars.

Even Amazon Prime has recently required MGM - they don't have to pay to have MGM movies stream on Prime, but if Netflix wants to show any MGM movies they have to pay up to Amazon now.

 

[kenny loris]

Agreed, with what you said, but cant ignore the fact that quality matters too. I understand that Disney has lots of channels to drive traffic, but they also promise good content and does not disappoint the incoming traffic. Whereas, this is not the case with Netflix.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Agreed, with what you said, but cant ignore the fact that quality matters too. I understand that Disney has lots of channels to drive traffic, but they also promise good content and does not disappoint the incoming traffic. Whereas, this is not the case with Netflix.

Eh....I don't think they've done much good with the Marvel or Star Wars episodic shows. They're all pretty mediocre in terms of acting and story telling. The only thing really going for these shows are the fact that they are based in the Marvel or Star Wars universe, which is why they do better over what Netflix offers. I think both Netflix and Disney+ don't offer anything great, just stuff that's okay to watch if you have time to kill and nothing better to do.