While streaming pioneer Netflix has recently had difficulties keeping users engaged, competitor Disney is doing really well. All three of the entertainment giant's video offerings are seeing significantly increasing subscription numbers. In the future, however, customers will have to dig deeper into their pockets.
Entertainment giant Walt Disney has seen rapid growth with its streaming services in the most recent fiscal quarter. The on-demand services Disney, Hulu and ESPN together had a total of 221 million subscriptions at the end of June, as the group announced after the US stock market closed. Disney has thus caught up with the previous market leader Netflix, which recently lost customers and also ended the past quarter with 221 million user accounts. "We had an excellent quarter," said Disney CEO Bob Chapek.
Disney and ESPN in particular flourished with annual growth rates of 31 and 53 percent, respectively, to a good 152 million and almost 23 million subscribers, respectively. Disney's third streaming service Hulu increased the number of subscriptions by 8 percent to 46 million users. The Disney streaming service, which only started in November 2019 as a Netflix hunter, gained 14.4 million customers in three months - significantly more than experts expected. He landed two big hits with the "Star Wars" series "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and Marvel's "Ms. Marvel".
Disney immediately used the strong demand to initiate strong price increases. For example, the price for the ad-free standard subscription at Disney for customers in the USA will increase by 3 dollars to 10.99 dollars per month on December 8th. However, like Netflix, Disney wants to introduce a cheaper version with commercial breaks. This offer is said to cost $7.99 a month – as much as the ad-free subscription used to be. With Hulu, the price goes up by one to two dollars per month, depending on the subscription model. ESPN also recently announced a price increase in the US.
Financially, too, things were going well for the entertainment empire, which also includes the classic TV cable division as well as film studios, theme parks, holiday resorts and cruise ships. Sales grew 26 percent year-on-year to $21.5 billion. Profit rose 53 percent to $1.4 billion.
The quarterly figures significantly exceeded analysts' expectations. The stock reacted after hours with a price increase of more than 4 percent. Disney recently had a difficult time on Wall Street – the share has been down 28 percent since the beginning of the year.
