The COVID-19 pandemic has crushed the financial futures of many film studios and theatrical distributors. But those businesses’ losses are benefitting streaming providers such as Netflix, who recently announced big growth. And then there’s Disney, who is not only hurting from the pandemic forcing people to stay indoors and not visit the company’s theme parks but is also gaining subscribers to the Disney+ streaming service at a huge rate. The gains of Disney+ are so impressive that apparently the future of the platform is going to be a lot nicer than originally thought.
According to Deadline, a new forecast by UK firm Digital TV Research predicts that Disney is expected to shatter previous expectations for growth of Disney+ over the next five years. Though, it still will have a long way to go before it catches up to Netflix.
The firm projects that Disney+ will have approximately 202 million subscribers by 2025. Digital TV Research previously expected the streaming platform to only reach 126 million by that time, while Disney is much more conservative, only anticipating 90 million by 2024. Of course, things have changed due to the pandemic and the fact that people are staying indoors and streaming content more than ever before. Back in April, it was announced that Disney+ had already surpassed 50 million subscribers in only 5 months.
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Of course, 202 million is a huge number, but the firm predicts that Netflix will have surpassed 258 million subs by that point, putting Disney+ still well behind. That being said, the Mouse House will still enjoy a massive lead over the likes of HBO Max and Apple TV+, which are only predicted to have 25 million and 14 million, respectively.
Now, this is only forecasting and who knows what could happen over the next five years. However, with Disney+ already shattering expectations, with the weight of the world’s biggest film and TV studio behind it, there’s no way that we can second guess the numbers. If anything, maybe the projections are even a bit conservative?