Disney Plus Hits 100 Million Subscribers
I’m trying to do some quick math in my head, here: What’s 100 million multiplied by seven bucks a month, multiplied by 12 times a year? Whatever it is, it’s a lot of money.
(Okay, it’s $8.4 billion. I found a calculator.)
This number is relevant today because Disney just announced that its streaming service, Disney+, has hit a major milestone: 100 million global subscribers. While the amount of revenue generated by the service might not be exactly the figure above — some people pay for bundles with other Disney services, some signed up for annual deals that came with a discount — it’s still a huge amount of Disney+ users in just 16 months since the site launched back in November of 2019. (By way of comparison, at the end of 2020, Netflix had 74 million subscribers in the U.S. and 204 million subscribers worldwide.)
Here was Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s statement about the news:
The enormous success of Disney+ —which has now surpassed 100 million subscribers—has inspired us to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content. In fact, we set a target of 100+ new titles per year, and this includes Disney Animation, Disney Live Action, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Our direct-to-consumer business is the Company’s top priority, and our robust pipeline of content will continue to fuel its growth.
The 100 million number is particularly impressive given that Disney hasn’t really devoted much original programming to the service so far. For its first year, the first season of The Mandalorian was really Disney+’s only must-see title. But now there’s two seasons of The Mandalorian and WandaVision and new Marvel shows coming every single month through the middle of 2021. As Chapek notes, the company has already greenlit several dozen more Star Wars and Marvel shows that are coming down the line and make a persuasive argument for sending that seven monthly bucks to Disney for the foreseeable future. Netflix had an advantage in being first in the marketplace, but Disney is already proving that financially, streaming is not a small world after all.
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