By: Nick Gambino
COVID-19 has been wreaking havoc on our daily lives with a near global quarantine in effect that has businesses shut down and families staying home. Not surprisingly, online businesses and services are seeing a major influx to their platforms. Zoom, Skype and even Tik Tok are seeing millions of daily active users flocking to their respective platforms, but in terms of streaming services, nobody has seen stronger recent growth than Disney+.
The fairly recent addition to the streaming wars showed strong numbers right out the gate when Disney+ debuted back in November 2019, but as the world stays at home, the Mickey Mouse streamer has nearly doubled their subscribers with 22 million added since the pandemic hit, or since they last reported numbers on February 4. This surge has pushed Disney+ over 50 million active subscribers in just 5 months.
Netflix is still king with over 167 million subscribers worldwide, but that’s been cultivated over many years. The unstoppable force that is Disney has been at it for less than half a year. They plan to rack up 60-90 million subscribers by 2024, a goal which is well within reach if they continue their current trajectory.
The constant growth is no surprise considering the company’s wealth of titles and properties in their vault. Not only do they own the last 80+ years of Disney titles – both animated and live-action – they also own Marvel, Lucasfilm (Star Wars and Indiana Jones), Pixar, ESPN, National Geographic and, more recently, all of 20th Century Fox’s 100-year catalog.
While they may not host ESPN content or all 20th Century Fox titles on the service, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Disney originals allow for the endless streaming of past movies and shows as well as the ability to create new content like The Mandalorian.
Even if you take into account the fact that Disney+ just launched in India, converting that country’s paying Hotstar subscribers (8 million) into instant Disney+ subscribers, they have still added a staggering 14 million paying accounts.
With HBO Max launching soon and other recent streaming additions like Quibi, there’s no lack of options available. Disney+ just happens to be one of the best.
