Disney has been the market leader in the entertainment and media industry for decades now but when it comes to web streaming service Disney Plus, what makes it special? Why do users subscribe to it? With the launch of so many streaming platforms, you need to offer something special to the customers to make then subscribe to your platform. With competitors like Netflix and Amazon Prime, who have been in the game for much longer period of time, Disney Plus really needed to stand out if it wanted to succeed. Luckily for them, they already have a well-established customer base and a good name in the industry. In just 2 years, Disney plus already has acquired 116 million subscribers whereas Netflix, its biggest competitor has 213 million subscribers.
With the availability of extremely famous movies, Disney’s unique selling point is the exclusive content that it has to offer. Since it has the rights for the movies and shows provided by Disney, Pixar, Marvel etc., no other platform can show these on their platform. Earlier Disney had distributed the showcasing rights to Netflix and Hulu. But after the launch of Disney Plus, they ended the contracts and uploaded all the content on their own platform. When it comes to online streaming platforms, the main thing that you have to offer is the premium content, if you have exclusive movies, shows and documentaries then that makes the customer click on your website.
How did the pandemic affect the business?
Due to pandemic, movie theatres were closed which provided new opportunity to Disney for promoting its streaming platform. They released various new movies like “Cruella”, “Luca” and the famous Superhero series “Loki” last year which helped them gain many new subscribers.
Cruella and Loki alone attracted 12.4 million new subscribers, which was more than what was initially predicted by the specialists. They even have an exclusive membership program now where you can watch the recently released movies by paying a little extra money. Is this the future of consuming content? With the growing dependency of technology, I think it is.
____________ Surabhi SRIVASTAVA
Word count: 350
Works Cited –
Barnes, B. (2021, August 12). Disney + Reaches 116 Million Subscribers . Retrieved from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/business/disney-plus-subscribers.html
Loki. (n.d.). Retrieved from Disney: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/character/loki
Official, D. (2021, August). Cruella. Retrieved from Disney: https://disney.fr/films/cruella