It’s good news for Disney+ as they reach 100 million subscribers

On March 9, Disney+ shared the following impressive update:

Disney+ has surpassed 100 million global paid subscribers in just 16 months since its launch, Bob Chapek, Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), announced today during the Company’s virtual Annual Meeting of Shareholders:

“The enormous success of Disney+ —which has now surpassed 100 million subscribers—has inspired us to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content. In fact, we set a target of 100+ new titles per year, and this includes Disney Animation, Disney Live Action, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Our direct-to-consumer business is the Company’s top priority, and our robust pipeline of content will continue to fuel its growth.”

Disney+ launched in the U.S. on November 12, 2019, and has rolled out rapidly across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Latin America, and most recently, Singapore.

As you’d expect, it’s all very positive, but there’s an even more impressive context.

Disney+ getting to 100 million subscribers — the context

With thanks to investment website The Motley Fool (other sites are available) we learned the following:

…there were only 86.8 million Disney+ subscribers when Disney held an investor-day event in December. Then when the company reported earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2021 in February, it had grown to 94.9 million subscribers. At this pace, it’s currently signing up more than 1 million new subscribers per week.

That’s not all:

At launch, management optimistically hoped for up to 90 million subscribers by the year 2024. Keep in mind that this was the company’s global goal.

There’s no denying this is superb news for Disney, and vindication their timing (though profit is not the same as income). As we’ve noted elsewhere recently, there’s a combination of factors at work including a multiplying factor due to behaviour change in lockdown. We’d like to strike a note of warning and predict the rate of growth will slow massively for most platforms as vaccination means lockdown gets lifted and we get other things to do with our time. That said we still expect plenty of growth and change in the streaming market. We’ll keep you posted.