Disney+ analysis — the library, subscribers, and features
It has been 8 months since Disney+ was launched in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. In the followings months, the streaming service expanded to 12 more countries, and more will come later this year. From day 1, Disney+ was gaining a lot of traction; 10 million people signed up during the launch on November 12th, and by the beginning of April, there were over 54 million subscribers reported. Disney+ is a new permanent home for brands like Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, of course, many Disney classics, and for new original movies and TV shows like Mandalorian as well.
Analysis of what the secret of the success of Disney+ is has been made a thousand times by different people. For today, we want to analyze Disney+ from a different point of view: by looking at hard data and figures about the library, subscribers, and trends.
Disney+ international expansion
The first country with Disney+ was the Netherlands, where the beta version with free access was launched on September 12, 2019. The official launch came on November 12 in the United States and Canada; together with the Netherlands, these were the first 3 countries to get the official version. Later that month, viewers from Australia and New Zealand were able to sign-up. The next wave of expansion was at the end of March and the beginning of April. The most recent country to get Disney+ is Japan, on June 11th, 2020.
If we look back to the Disney+ presentation from Investor Day 2019, we can clearly see some minor changes to the release calendar. Western Europe was expected to be fully launched in the first half of the calendar year 2020 (Disney’s fiscal year is one quarter ahead), but people from Scandinavia, Belgium, Portugal, and Luxembourg will get Disney+ later — on September 15th. We do not know the exact reason for the delay — it could be the corona-crisis, it could be a technical issue, it could be both. The expansion to Eastern Europe will, because of this, take place at the beginning of the 2021 calendar year at the earliest.
There will be a slight delay in Latin America as well. The original plan was to launch in all countries in the last quarter of 2020, but so far only Brazil has a rough date (November), and there is no news about the launch in Mexico, nor in any other country. The expansion into the Asia-Pacific region, which is to be stretched over two years, has already started in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. In the specific case of India, Disney+ has merged with the current streaming service Hotstar (owned already by Disney). The Middle East and Africa were not included in the original calendar at all; Disney+ made a deal with Arabic telco operator OSN to license some of the original content and has possibly scrapped all plans to launch its own service in that area.
Disney+ subscribers
From the first day, the Disney+ launch was linked with the impressive growth of its subscriber base; 10 million users signed up on the first day, and this overload caused a massive technical outage. Disney then reported 26.5 million at the end of January and 54.5 million in April. The original prediction was to reach 60 million in 18 months; this will be easily achieved, probably in only 9 months. Industry experts are now predicting 130 million by 2024 instead of the original predicted 90 million subscribers.
Similar to Netflix, the biggest streaming competition to Disney+, Disney does not share detailed info about how many people signed up in specific countries, but from various sources, it is possible to build up an estimation per state. If you are surprised that Disney+ already has 8 million subscribers in India despite the late start, it’s because the existing Indian customers from Hotstar are already counted as part of Disney+. Are we sure? Well, Disney has confirmed it.
In the wake of the expansion, Disney+ is definitely counting on strong numbers from markets already marked as Disney-loving — Japan being already on, the next big thing for Disney is Brazil and Mexico. The rest of Europe is not that promising; Scandinavia is very well known for subscription popularity, but the Disney brand is not that particularly popular there. In Eastern Europe, the situation is much worse: the streaming industry is still a newborn there, and the only really big market is Russia. This leads to the point when — or maybe if — Disney+ is launched in China. The second-biggest entertainment market has been Hollywood’s aim for the past decade, but options are limited; Netflix is not present in China, for example. Will Disney+ break the curse as it did with the Disney Resort in Shanghai?
Disney+ library
Let’s dive more into the numbers. Of course, we all know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar animated movies, all Star Wars episodes and National Geographic documentaries are flagships of the Disney+ library, but how many titles are in fact on Disney+? We compared the library of 13 countries where Disney+ was launched as an original streaming service. Note, however, that there are 2 exceptions which will be missing; firstly, India, where the catalog is filled with the already-running Hotstar library, and secondly, in Japan, where Disney+ signed the exclusive deal with a local provider DoCoMo, and the service is only partially running on the same technical principle. So what are the results?
In terms of clear figures, the richest library is in Australia, with 1090 titles. New Zealand is second, the US is third, Canada is fourth, and then the UK and Ireland. It is no surprise that English-speaking countries have the widest offer. This is not because dealing with other languages is difficult, but, usually, the license deals are much simpler with close markets like Canada or the UK. Australia can benefit from a long-term good relationship with the FOX brand, so, for example, all the X-Men or Home Alone movies are already there. US or Canadian subscribers still have to wait for selected movies from the recently closed Disney-FOX merge because the titles are exclusive to other platforms. On the other hand, US viewers could enjoy the richest selection of older Disney short movies and TV shows.
The bottom half is reserved for France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Some of the FOX movies are already there, but generally, there is a lack of Disney TV shows, probably tied to existing content licenses as well. The protection of distribution windows is really strong in France and Germany, so lots of titles are clearly behind in the schedule. See the Disney+ release dates for Frozen II or Onward. And even Disney+ originals are not always there; Artemis Fowl, which was originally planned for theatrical release, is not streaming in german-speaking countries at all.
Disney+ features and options
One of the key factors of international expansion is local distribution. In every market, streaming services like Disney+ are trying to participate with local telco operators to get easier access to paying customers. One of the conditions or requirements in that deal is to equip as many titles as they can with local audio or subtitles. This is the key for non-English speaking countries, especially, in Disney’s case, where the major target group is families with little children. As you can see, the percentage of local audio or local subtitles is not always 100%. Disney+ is also ready for expansion into other countries, and a lot of content already has Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Polish language and audio support. Also, there’s a separate language branch for Portuguese and Spanish support in Latin America.
Another key tactic in international expansion is local content. Netflix’s subscription base was growing fast in English-speaking countries, but when the streaming giant reached Spanish, French, Portugal, or German-speaking countries, it was not that easy. The goal was achieved by producing or acquiring local movies and TV shows. A similar tactic was done by HBO, where the local production in Europe or Latin America is done by local branches. This is obviously not the case for Disney: most of the content is and will remain as US originals, with some exceptions in a co-production.
The last, but not least interesting figure, is technical quality. Disney+ offers, from the beginning, a nice selection of 4K content and, for the same price as for SD or HD content. You can stream almost 150 titles in UHD in the US so far; all the eye-candy blockbusters like Star Wars or The Avengers are there. Tech buffs will also appreciate the Dolby Vision video enhancement (140+ titles) and super Dolby Atmos audio quality (almost 100 titles).
We at Flixpatrol.com are observing all streaming trends in the world, Disney+ is of course part of our streaming and VOD charts. See the daily updated charts for 13 countries with Disney+ to know what the most popular movies and TV shows are. Not surprisingly, The Simpsons are by far the most popular TV content; kids' content is also popular among feature movies — Frozen, Moana, or Toy Story are the regular winners. For every Disney+ fan, viewer, or analyst, we have recently launched Disney+ search the streaming catalog, where you can browse, search, and compare libraries in the US, UK, and other countries as well. Check it out at flixpatrol.com/streaming/disney-plus
