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From Fool:
Walt Disney blew away all expectations with its Disney+ streaming service, both its own and those of analysts. Subscriber counts the entertainment giant thought it would take years to reach occurred in just months.
Certainly the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in supercharging the numbers, as did the free trials Verizon offered for its subscribers and the low monthly subscription cost. But other services that also launched around the same time as Disney+ that enjoyed similar advantages didn’t experience the same level of adoption among consumers.
Now, Disney+ is on target to catch up to and potentially surpass Netflix as soon as next year.
A lot of credit for the recent streaming growth belongs to the Star Wars spinoff series The Mandalorian, an episodic Western space drama serial that goes back to the roots of the movie franchise and pays homage to the classic storytelling that endeared the original films to millions of fans.
Yet Disney also has a massive movie and TV show library it was able to tap into, including content more often than not geared toward children, which proved vital with families stuck at home during lockdowns and with movie theaters closed.
All of that is translating into impressive subscriber growth, even as Netflix sees its momentum slowing. The streaming pioneer also saw a spike in new subscriber additions early on in the pandemic — it added 25.86 million new accounts in the first half of 2020, almost as many as it added for all of 2019. However, that growth slowed to a trickle in the third quarter when Netflix added just 2.2 million subscribers, and only 177,000 were in the U.S.
That happened even as Disney+ grew from 33.5 million subscribers in the second quarter to 57.5 million in the third. Over the next few years, Disney could very well surpass Netflix to become the leading name in streaming. And in terms of revenue, Disney could take the No. 1 spot as soon as 2022.
(image source: YouTube)
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