The 196.4 million customers accumulated between Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ ratify Disney’s strategy regarding D2C streaming, which has a clear objective: to generate more and more content.
The Walt Disney Company is standing tall: during the first quarter of its fiscal year 2022 (October to December 2021) it significantly increased its turnover and achieved profits of 1.1 billion dollars.
The great drivers of these figures were, on the one hand, the recovery of its amusement park division after the pandemic hit, and on the other, its streaming strategy, which far exceeded market projections.
Its star service Disney+ added 11.8 million subscribers in the quarter, thus reaching a total of 129.8 million members worldwide. During 2021 alone, the platform grew by some 35 million users.
Disney+ is joined by the company’s other streaming services, which also registered a “significant rise” in subscribers and ended the year with more than positive figures: Hulu with 45.3 million, and ESPN+ with 21.3 million.
Thus, Disney’s streaming business already reaches 196.4 million global users.
“It’s all about content, content, content,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said during the earnings call, noting the release of the movie Encanto as a catalyst for new subscriptions.
This way, this quarter the company expects to spend on content for its direct-to-consumer platforms about 1 billion dollars more than what was spent during the same period of the previous year.
Chapek stressed that Disney+ met its goal of releasing a new title every week, and wants to double content production. In 2023, once they reach the new programming volume goal, they will evaluate increasing the subscription price of the service.
The CEO celebrated the “very solid start to the fiscal year”, which left Mickey Mouse’s firm with revenues of 21.8 billion dollars, 34% more than the previous year.
The good results led to a rise of 7% in the company’s shares at the close of trading.
