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Disney just announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2020. And because of the pandemic, most people are focusing in on the Disney+ adds, and Disney blew it out of the park. Totaling 94.9 million subscribers now. What’s more impressive, is that Disney expected to hit 60 to 90 million paying subscribers by 2024. Instead, it surpassed the high-end three years ahead of time.
Because Disney+ blew past its targets three years early, it has now changed its goal to 230 to 260 million subscribers by 2024. Which is a really impressive increase. That’s nearly three times the amount of subscribers it had originally forecasted. It turns out, people really like Disney+.
The pandemic helped accelerate subscriber growth for Disney+
In December, Disney+ had around 86 million subscribers. Almost three months later, exactly, it added 8 million more subscribers. Which is honestly very impressive.
With everyone being forced to stay home for almost a year now, it helped Disney+ add millions more subscribers than it expected to. Because people needed something to watch and keep themselves busy. And with the price of just $7.99 per month for Disney+, it’s a pretty inexpensive streaming service. Considering Netflix starts at $8.99 on its base-plan, and HBO MAX is $14.99.
What’s even more impressive is that Disney+ hasn’t been able to create as much content as it had planned too, because production was halted last March. Despite it launching less original content, Disney+ is still adding millions of subscribers every month. Which goes to show how massive the library of Disney actually is.
Of course, movies like Soul, Mulan and others launching on the service also helped out. Since Soul is the biggest title on SVOD right now. That also comes before WandaVision launched on the service, which means that they might be closer to 100 million subscribers by now.
Disney+ is quickly coming for Netflix’s lunch, and could overtake Netflix in the next year or even sooner. Which would be impressive, but of course, we wouldn’t be surprised when that happens.