On one side Netflix is struggling, and even expects two million fewer subscribers for the second quarter of 2022, and the other Disney celebrating.
Its Disney Plus platform has indeed brought home a very successful first quarter: 7.9 million new subscribers they joined in the first 3 months of the year. The company announced it directly in the latest formal communications to shareholders: the total subscribers on a global scale now stands at 87.6 million, which would theoretically be added another 50.1 million Disney Plus Hotstar subscribers on the Indian market. In the United States and Canada alone, Disney Plus has 7.1 million more subscribers than a year ago, reaching 44.4 million.
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The strength of franchises like Star Wars and Marvel
Also Reed Hastings, co-Ceo di Netflix, had recently commented on the takeover of competitors, alluding to the very strong brands and franchises in the hands of Walt Disney on the occasion of the inauguration of the Italian headquarters of the platform in Rome, in via Boncompagni. On the other hand, Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic “sell themselves”, one might say. That is, they are brands and creative universes with very strong audiences of fans, a hard core who loves to have the entire catalog of favorite films and series available in part. different from the perhaps more generalist Netflix userwhich every time must be convinced and in some way reconquered with new titles and new level productions.
In streaming, no missteps
Returning to Disney, the group explained that subscribers to all streaming services, which also include Espn Plus and Hulu (not available in Italy), have reached 205 million, with a significant increase from the 196.4 of last January. A very rapid growth, even higher than that of HBO and HBO Max (these too theoretically unreachable from Italy, but recently arrived in 15 European countries), which announced 3 million new subscribers in the last quarter, for a total of 77 millions. However, we must not forget that Netflix still leads the streaming game, which however promises profound changes in the coming months, with its 222 million subscribers. And above all, as shown by the surreal case of CNN Plus, inaugurated and closed within a month, it does not allow missteps, even if behind it there are giants like Warner Bros.
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But the costs are rising more and more
The same case of Disney Plus, which also celebrates an excellent quarterly, is basically emblematic: the group is also earning more, with those who look at its platform. Self the average revenue per subscriber was $ 6.01, with the latest accounts rising to $ 6.32. This is obviously due to the increase in the price of season tickets, even in Italy. The last shot was last year with the arrival of the generalist channel Star and another would be in the pipeline by 2022.
Yet it is losing money (the platform’s operating loss was $ 0.9 billion in the last quarter) on the costs of productionthe advertising e le technologies which serve to maintain a high quality offer to millions of people around the world. These are costs that will not drop that much and often the script, for these platforms, always seems the same: increase in costs, consequent increase in the price of subscriptions and the risk of a slowdown in their growth.
For this reason, as already anticipated in March, even Disney (as Netflix admitted a few days ago) will reveal sooner or later a less expensive plan, but with advertising. And, as mentioned and as confirmed by the CEO, Bob Chapek, will return to retouch the prices: “As we increase our investment in content, we believe this will give us the ability to adjust our price.” In short: the way of streaming is increasingly freemium and supported by advertising.