Disney+ Hits Over 28 Million Paid Subscribers Since Launch

During an earnings call with investors earlier today Disney had announced that they had 26.5 million paid subscribers to Disney+ by the end of 2019. Bob Iger let investors know how impactful the streaming service has been to the company. “The launch of Disney+ has been enormously successful, exceeding even our greatest expectations.” Iger also revealed as of February 3, the service has earned 28.6 million paid subscribers. These numbers lined up with what analysts projected last year stating that the $7 dollar a month service would have anywhere between 20-25 million subscribers by this time. Disney+ isn’t out in every market globally, as of now those countries, include the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and Puerto Rico, but will begin to roll out to more countries this spring. With a 28.6 million subscriber base, it is still far behind streaming leader Netflix, which has nearly 68 million subscribers domestically and 167 million subscribers worldwide. Disney-owned Hulu, meanwhile, has 30.7 million U.S. subscribers as of Feb. 3, up from 30.4 million at the end of 2019. ESPN+ has 7.6 million subscribers, up from 6.6 million at the end of 2019. Disney has over 63 million subscribers between its three services, with Hulu accounting for the largest percentage of the memberships, though Disney+ after almost three months is already close to catching up. The 12-year-old Hulu grew by 33 percent from the same period last year, with 27.2 million people paying for its stand-alone on-demand offering and 3.2 million paying paying for both Hulu on-demand and live TV. Read: Disney+ Is Worth Over $100 Billion By Investors Along with over 80 years of exsisting Disney content, the service offers a variety of popular original programming like The Mandalorian, Diary of a Future President,  The Imagineering Story, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Togo, Lady and the Tramp, Noelle, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, and Encore, amongst others. The big question lingering is how the service will keep subscribers with the lack of original content at the moment especially with the end of The Mandalorian. Survey suggest that Disney Classics are the most watched content on the service. That said Disney plans on rolling out more original content in 2020 including Monsters at Work, Timmy Failure, Safety, Flora & Ulysses, Stargirl, Magic Camp, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and The Mandalorian season 2.