Disney+ Grows to 152 Million Subscribers

Aisha Malik, reporting for TechCrunch:

The Walt Disney Company reported on Wednesday that total Disney+ subscriptions rose to 152.1 million during the company’s third quarter, posting better-than-expected results. The streaming service added 14.4 million subscribers in the quarter, beating expectations of 10 million. [...]

At the end of the quarter, Hulu had 46.2 million subscribers and ESPN+ had 22.8 million. These numbers bring Disney’s DTC subscribers to 221.1 million in total, which means that the company’s streaming services combined now surpass Netflix in total subscribers. Netflix reported 220.67 million total global subscribers for its third quarter after losing almost 970,000 subscribers.

Disney+, by itself, is still behind Netflix, but still, this is something. To me, it betrays Netflix’s glaring weakness: they’ve got nothing but their streaming service. I think what’s going to shake out is that streaming services are an add-on to fundamental products, not a fundamental product in and of themselves.

My question, at this point, is who is going to buy Netflix? Microsoft, I guess?

★ Wednesday, 10 August 2022