By Edcel Dionisio
Streaming services are steadily gaining popularity especially when most people are spending their time indoors. Among these streaming services is Disney+ which is proving to be the new audience favorite according to some projections.
Despite only being launched in late 2019 and operating for 16 months, Disney+ announced that it has reached over 100 million subscribers – not a mean feat considering that Netflix, the streaming service with the most subscribers as of January 2021, took a decade to reach this milestone.
In an article by The Guardian, Richard Broughton, a media analyst from Ampere Analysis, stated that Disney+ had “some of the fastest growth” ever seen from an on-demand video streaming service. “While Disney+ is still only half the size of Netflix, it has reached that milestone in an unprecedented timescale,” said Broughton. If this trend is to continue, Ampere Analysis predicts that Disney+ will overtake Amazon Prime Video by 2024 and Netflix by 2025 in terms of number of subscribers.
This rapid growth is unexpected partly due to the fact that other services offer more hours of content compared to Disney+. For instance, Netflix has 40,000 hours of content while Amazon has 50,000. Compared to these two long-established streaming services, Disney+ currently only has 4,500 hours of content.
When asked why he thinks this is, Broughton said, “It is about quality over quantity. The others have volume, Disney relies on the quality of its brands. It has shows and films that people, fans, feel they must watch.”
Shows and movies under beloved pop culture franchises such as Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as classics like Disney Princesses and Pixar animated movies, all share one roof under the Disney+ platform, and it’s a credit to the popularity of these blockbuster franchises, as well as the standalone strength of their individual movies and series that Disney+ continues to grow.
For example, one of the streaming site’s first original series, The Mandalorian, saw massive success with long-time fans of the Star Wars franchise. It often became a trending topic, with clips, stills and memes spreading like wildfire across social media platforms. Who could forget the craze over the cute little alien toddler named Grogu (more commonly known as Baby Yoda)?
More recently, the WandaVision series from the Marvel franchise is also getting the same viral treatment from fans. The massive support the show garnered is evident in how it almost always trended on social media, especially on Twitter while it was running. Additionally, Nielsen reported that Wanda Vision was watched 6.5 million times in America alone.
It’s clear that Disney+ is taking full advantage of their acquisition of Marvel and LucasFilm. With more upcoming shows from these big franchises such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Obi-Wan, as well as its current repertoire of beloved movies and series, Disney+ is set to continue its trajectory in the following years and we all can’t wait to experience more of Disney’s magic.