Disney is emerging victorious from the fierce battle for on-demand television customers.
While Warner is merging HBO Max with Discovery+ and Netflix is suffering subscriber loss for the first time since its founding, Disney has beaten analysts' forecasts and become the new pay-TV king by number of subscribers.
The company announced this Wednesday that its three services, Disney, ESPN + and Hulu, already have 221.1 million subscribers worldwide, compared to 220.67 million Netflix at the end of the first half.
“We've had a terrific quarter, with our world-class creative and commercial teams driving extraordinary performance across our domestic theme parks, huge increases in live sports viewership and significant subscriber growth across our
streaming services.
With the 14.4 million Disney+ subscribers added in the third fiscal quarter, we now have 221 million total subscriptions across our
streaming offerings,"
said Bob Chapek, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, in a statement. release.
The offers of both groups are not entirely comparable.
Netflix has a unique service, even the one that brings together the most subscribers, while Disney adds different services and platforms.
The company has indicated that Disney + has 152.1 million subscribers after raising its number by 31% in one year, thanks mainly to the pull outside the United States.
ESPN+, specialized in Sports and which broadcasts LaLiga matches in the United States, has grown 53% in one year and already has 22.8 million subscribers.
For its part, Hulu, which mainly broadcasts series, grew 8% and has 46.2 million subscribers.
Leadership, however, can be fleeting.
The subscriber figure includes 58.4 million subscribers to its Disney + Hotstar service, from India, but the company has lost the broadcasting rights to the cricket competition, the king sport of the country, and analysts believe that it can cost millions of subscriber drops.
Low revenue per subscriber
Disney has low revenue per subscriber on some of those offerings.
ESPN+, for example, only earns an average of $4.55 per customer, and Disney+ only $4.35 per subscriber on average, including its ultra-cheap service in India, which brings in just $1.20 per month per customer.
In the United States, the average income exceeds 6 dollars.
Even so, the company has, in fact, decided to raise prices immediately in the United States for both Disney + and Hulu.
Previously it had already announced an increase in ESPN +.
Not only the television business has brought joy to Disney.
Theme park revenues have also skyrocketed as the pandemic has been overcome.
At Disneyland Paris, pre-pandemic revenue levels have already been exceeded, the company announced in a presentation to analysts.
For their part, Doctor Strange and Thor, the group's two big releases, both from the Marvel franchise, are boosting the results of the film production business.
As a whole, Disney's income has grown by 26%, to 21,504 million dollars (about 20,900 million euros) and profit has shot up 53% to 1,504 million dollars, according to the company.
The company's shares appreciate strongly outside of normal open market hours.
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