Disney+ beats Netflix in the subscribers competition

In April, streaming giant Netflix surprised the public by declaring that it would lose 2 million customers in the months ahead for the first time after years of meteoric growth. But Disney's quarterly results, released last Wednesday, seem to reveal a new earthquake in the already precarious world of streaming. According to Quartz Walt Disney Company in fact recorded 221.1 million total worldwide subscriptions through its streaming services (Disney+, Disney+ Hotstar, Hulu and ESPN+), compared to Netflix's 220.7 million total subscriptions, at the same time Hulu and ESPN+ individually also recorded slight increases in the number of viewers, growing from 45.6 million subscribers to 46.2 million and from 22.3 million to 22.8 million, respectively. The debacle was disputed by Netflix, which claimed that Disney would calculate the total number of its subscribers based on the various bundles, and by doing so a family purchasing Disney Bundle (which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) would be counted as three separate subscriptions. In addition, Disney+ is set to launch a new ad-supported subscription at $7.99 and a "premium," uninterrupted version at $10.99. The same goes for Netflix, which, however, has not yet released its prices, for which we will have to wait until 2023.

Disney+'s palpable advantage over its competitors depends on a concomitance of factors: first launched in November 2019, the streaming platform quickly gained ground by setting $6.99 per month as its starting price, at the time almost half of Netflix's standard plan, but more or less on par with the entry-level plan at $9.99, which nonetheless did not offer high-definition video. Also in terms of convenience there's the Bundle option, a factor that could help increase overall subscriptions: in fact, for $9.99 (with ads) or $19.99 (without), viewers can get Disney+ and Hulu together, plus a free version of ESPN+. The figures released by Disney also do not reflect single movie records such as the recent Prey, the Predator prequel, which debuted on the platform last week setting the record for the most-watched premiere on Hulu. According to Variety, the successes continue at the box office with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder, the third (nearly $1 billion) and sixth ($700 million) grossing films globally, respectively, as well as a rich slate of titles , including She-Hulk - Attorney at Law, Star Wars: Andor, and the highly anticipated theatrical release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 

A focused strategy that has led the company to reap successes, already with the acquisition of 20th Century Fox for 72 billion that laid the groundwork to become a leader in the streaming sector, enriching an already dense portfolio in itself with the rights to thousands of titles such as How Meet Your Mother, Grey's Anatomy, The Simpsons, in addition to those already in its possession from previous acquisitions (Marvel, Pixar, Miramax, Lucasfilm) and its own productions. Disney's is a century-old behemoth that has taken over Hollywood step by step, which poses a problem on the creative and economic side given that a large part of the film and serial output we see today comes from Disney itself, making it difficult to imagine a world in which another film studio could become a worthy rival to this behemoth. Surely the subscriber milestone is just the latest in a string of successes destined to repeat itself and confirm Disney's monopoly in the world of film and entertainment.