Disney+ made an impact on the streaming industry, according to a recent Wall Street analyst report saying that the new streaming platform had approximately 24 million subscribers by the end of November 2019, which resulted in a net loss for Netflix.
The report came from Cowen & Co., estimating approximately 1 million of Netflix’s U.S. subscribers canceled their subscriptions in favor of Disney+, which has received high praise since launching on November 12th, according to reports.
Disney+ launched with Star Wars series ‘The Mandalorian’ and has aggressively promoted their proprietary series including Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Disney films, which has helped boost Disney’s platform. Disney previously announced 10 million users signed for Disney+ the day after the service launched.
According to the report, approximately 19.4 million consumers subscribed to both Netflix and Disney+, indicating an 80% overlap between the two platforms.
Netflix has had a mixed year for the streaming platform. Netflix, which raised its prices earlier in the year, missed its U.S. subscriber forecast in the company’s third-quarter and reported a loss of 126,000 U.S. subscribers in Q2.
Disney started removing some of its popular productions off of Netflix leading up to the launch of Disney+. Disney-branded projects including ‘Daredevil’ and ‘January Jones’ were canceled shortly after Disney+ was announced.
While the Cowen report is good news for Disney+, a large number of their users are reportedly not paying for the service. Disney signed a deal with Verizon, which allowed for Verizon customers with the carrier’s unlimited data plan to receive a free year of Disney+, and Cowen estimated around a third of Disney+’s U.S. subscribers were taking advantage of that deal.
This news comes after Netflix’s Chief Creative Officer commented on Disney+’s launch.
Netflix’s Ted Sarandos gave his response to Disney+’s launch during a talk at the Paley Center’s International Council Summit in New York.
“We’ve been competing with Disney and all these other folks who are coming into this from the beginning,” he said. “For us, nothing really changes. We’ve always been customer-first and we don’t really get distracted by competition. We figured at some point everyone would get into this business.”
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer add that he’s “frankly surprised it took Disney and other people this long to go down this path. It’s a hard change. These companies that have been built on making and selling content to other people, can they actually make more money or do better in business selling it directly to the consumer? … It’s a hard bet, and it’s a bet-the-farm one.”
In other entertainment news, Disney is now filming three TV shows in Georgia and now hiring.