When Disney announced plans to
launch its own exclusive digital streaming service, pulling out its online
content from other streaming platforms to consolidate them there behind user
subscriptions, it seemed like a significant risk. At the time, it did not seem
reasonable for a media company to keep all its digital content on their own
online playpen, with the promise of new original stuff as incentive. Disney
however was confident that their plan will work. Of course, they did have some
modest goals, such as a subscriber milestone that they estimated will take
about four years to reach. It turns out they underestimated themselves too.
According to The Verge, the four-year subscriber count that the House of Mouse
expected for their Disney+ digital platform needed just over a year to be
reached, and surpassed. This was made clear by the media giant during their Q1
2021 earnings report. They pegged sometime in late 2023 for their service’s
subscribers to reach the 90 million mark. But as of January 2021 Disney+
already has 94.9 million subscribers. That number is spread out across the
Americas, Western Europe, Scandinavia, India, Japan, and ANZAC, as well as
North Africa and the Middle East (the last two via third-party distributors).
Several factors have been
considered as for the massive spike in subscriptions for Disney+ when its scope
of media is technically limited compared to Netflix or Hulu. There is the
positive reception to its original programming, particularly the “Star Wars”
spinoff series “The Mandalorian.” Then there is the fact that some film
releases for 2020 that were botched on account of the COVID pandemic were
streamed digitally at Disney+ instead. Examples include the Disney-Pixar
animated film “Soul,” a nominee for the coming Golden Globe Awards, as well as
the cinematic recording of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.”
With more Disney+ originals such
as the MCU series “WandaVision” already playing alongside existing content
coming as far back as years and decades of Disney production history, it is no
dream if, as more markets are opened to the streaming service the subscriber
count reaches 100 million before the year is out. In fact, given that their
four-year milestone was already reached, Disney is setting a new mark of
anywhere from 230 to 260 million subs by the year 2024. They are even confident
enough to raise subscription rates from the starting $6.99, as effective March
26 it will be $7.99 monthly or $79.99 yearly to get access to Disney+.
Image courtesy of Deadline
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