The answer is 86 million. The Jeopardy question would be: How many streaming subscribers has Disney signed up in its first year? This eye-popping number shows how quickly Disney+ has reached escape velocity.
While no doubt helped by the pandemic’s stay-at-home lifestyle, this is an impressive feat nonetheless. The 86 million does not even include Disney’s other streaming brands from ESPN+ and Hulu. Taking a growth path for all three together could mean reaching over 300 million combined subscribers by 2024. For perspective, Netflix has about 200 worldwide subscribers that has taken them years to reach that level. A lot of people are going to be watching a lot of movies at home.
Stock up on popcorn.
The following excerpt from a Wall St. Journal article reports more on the topic:
Walt Disney’s flagship streaming service Disney+ is growing at such a clip that the company’s world-wide subscriber count could triple to 260 million by 2024, the company said Thursday. That is a massive increase from its current count of 86.8 million subscribers worldwide.
The revised guidance puts Disney’s year-old service in the league of its chief streaming competitor, Netflix Inc., which currently has nearly 200 million subscribers globally but isn’t growing as fast as Disney+. Disney+ has already surpassed the company’s previous guidance, when it said it hoped to reach between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by 2024.
Disney is raising the monthly price of Disney+ $1 to $7.99 next March as it is dramatically increasing its spending on TV shows and movies for the service.
The streaming platform, which launched last November, has topped the anticipated growth rates in part because of people stuck at home due to Covid-19 who are hungry for content. It added more than 13 million subscribers between early October and early December.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group