Disney+ gained 16.5M subscribers in just 10 days thanks to coronavirus

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AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in General Discussion edited May 2020
From the end of March to early April, Disney's breakout streaming service, Disney+, gained some 16.5 million paid subscribers in just 10 days, according to the company's second quarter earnings report.

Disney Plus


According to the company's quarterly earnings report, released on Tuesday, Disney+ had 33.5 million subscribers on March 28, 2020. On April 8, just 10 days later, Disney announced that it had hit 50 million subscribers.

The growth spurt was temporary, however, as Disney+ had 54.5 million paid subscribers as of May 4.

Disney also said that its direct-to-consumer and international revenues for the quarter grew from $1.1 billion to $4.1 billion.

Since March, much of the world has been under mandated stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, which likely played a part in Disney's subscriber boom. Other contributing factors include the service's official launch into Europe and India.

The Disney streaming platform originally launched in November 2019, just two weeks after Apple's Apple TV+ service.

During Apple's last earnings call on April 30, the company said that its Services business remained a bright spot during an economically tough quarter, but provided no updated statistics on Apple TV+ subscriber count.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    trashman69trashman69 Posts: 161member
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.





    6502dewmeentropyschemengin1
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  • Reply 2 of 11
    65026502 Posts: 382member
    trashman69 said:
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.





    Ha ha, exactly. Little known fact: when you have decent content you get tons of subscribers.
    dewmeentropyschemengin1trashman69
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  • Reply 3 of 11
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,956member
    If the AppleTV user interface sorted its icons based on most frequently used, Disney+ would be right at the top of my AppleTV, followed by YouTube, then Spectrum. What can I say...
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 11
    Beatsbeats Posts: 3,073member
    trashman69 said:
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.





    This is dumb. Seriously. I've never watched TV+ nor do I care much for it but get real, Disney has almost 100 years of content. Disney's new content is just as PC as Apple's. Heck, Apple's content is better than Disney's from 2019 and on if you wanna be fair.

    To compare Apple's less than one year of production to Disney's almost century of productions is ridiculous.
    Rayz2016
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  • Reply 5 of 11
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,403member
    Beats, if Apple TV+ wasn’t so small, and I mean that in a big way, trashman69’s comment wouldn’t have been as funny. As it is, theys got nuthun.  
    Beats
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  • Reply 6 of 11
    JWSCjwsc Posts: 1,203member
    Or maybe it was season 7 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  (Or maybe it’s just the geek in me talking.)  When season 6 moved from Cartoon Network to Netflix I got a Netflix subscription.  (Yea, I’m a geek I know.)

    Long story short - content is king.
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  • Reply 7 of 11
    uraharaurahara Posts: 733member
    Maldolorian is such a bad series though. IMHO.
    If not the cuteness of baby Yoda, it would fail miserably even for hard core Star Wars fans.
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  • Reply 8 of 11
    65026502 Posts: 382member
    Beats said:
    trashman69 said:
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.





    This is dumb. Seriously. I've never watched TV+ nor do I care much for it but get real, Disney has almost 100 years of content. Disney's new content is just as PC as Apple's. Heck, Apple's content is better than Disney's from 2019 and on if you wanna be fair.

    To compare Apple's less than one year of production to Disney's almost century of productions is ridiculous.
    I think his point was just throwing money at Oprah won't fix your content woes. SiriusXM did the same thing and gave Oprah something like $30M, she did maybe one show and wasn't heard from since. It's like they're thinking the american public is so dumb that if we just mention Oprah's name we'll get millions of subscribers.
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  • Reply 9 of 11
    Beatsbeats Posts: 3,073member
    entropys said:
    Beats, if Apple TV+ wasn’t so small, and I mean that in a big way, trashman69’s comment wouldn’t have been as funny. As it is, theys got nuthun.  

    The service isn't even a year old! People are intentionally making an unfair comparison. Compare Disney's year one to Apples year one. I'm not even defending Apple here just defending common sense.


    6502 said:
    Beats said:
    trashman69 said:
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.





    This is dumb. Seriously. I've never watched TV+ nor do I care much for it but get real, Disney has almost 100 years of content. Disney's new content is just as PC as Apple's. Heck, Apple's content is better than Disney's from 2019 and on if you wanna be fair.

    To compare Apple's less than one year of production to Disney's almost century of productions is ridiculous.
    I think his point was just throwing money at Oprah won't fix your content woes. SiriusXM did the same thing and gave Oprah something like $30M, she did maybe one show and wasn't heard from since. It's like they're thinking the american public is so dumb that if we just mention Oprah's name we'll get millions of subscribers.

    I'm definitely not a fan of Oprah but we'll wait and see. I know a lot of women love her.

    I think it's fine as long as we get some content on the other side of the fence. Maybe some exclusive Quentin Tarantino films.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 10 of 11
    Beatsbeats Posts: 3,073member
    urahara said:
    Maldolorian is such a bad series though. IMHO.
    If not the cuteness of baby Yoda, it would fail miserably even for hard core Star Wars fans.
    Which would be fair way to compare to Apples original series. Streaming originals to originals. But comparing 100 years of content to a service which isn't even a year old is dumb. Did people expect Apple to produce a century's worth of content in 11 months?
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 11 of 11
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,468member
    And Tim Cook screamed

    “How did Disney achieve this?  They have zero Oprah Winfrey content”.
    You're wrong, as usual.

    https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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