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How Will Disney+ Grow from Here?
An unprecedented marketing campaign, top-tier content, and a low price — what’s missing?
The day after Disney+ launched on November 12, the company made a startling announcement that 10 million users had signed up for the subscription video service. This figure shocked most industry analysts, and amounted to 17% of Netflix’s domestic subscriber base (60.6 million) and more than 33% of Hulu’s most recently announced subscriber base (28 million), all in just one day. More recent reports have suggested that the Disney+ mobile app has been downloaded more than 22 million times since launch.
While it is important to note the distinction between “sign-ups” (accounts registered for a free trial), “downloads,” (one Disney+ user can have up to 10 mobile devices), and “subscribers,” (a paid account, either from the consumer directly or a distribution partner of Disney, such as Verizon), the consensus is that Disney+ is exceeding all expectations, and has the best chance to become the media-incumbent, subscription video-on-demand rival (SVOD) to Netflix. But after years of preparation, the stockpiling of top-tier content, and an unprecedented marketing campaign, what is Disney counting on to attract the 50 to 80 million potential additional subscribers that they’re targeting who have yet to subscribe to Disney+?
Disney+ is the culmination of years of work behind the scenes at The Walt Disney Company, which reorganized the entire organization to prioritize the new streaming service, changing decades-old distribution strategies, and even acquiring another of the “big six” studios (21st Century Fox) in order to bolster its content offerings. On top of this, the company spared no expense on marketing the service and ensured that some of the most popular and culturally relevant content of the past 20 years would be available with no ads at a price of just $6.99 per month. In addition, the service’s first original series, The Mandalorian, reached the cultural zeitgeist with the adorable Baby Yoda.
So as successful as the service’s launch has been, why haven’t more people signed up for Disney+? And what will change that in the future? There are a few potential answers, with some much more likely than the others.
