Disney recently announced their intention to create their own streaming service that would serve as the exclusive home to their huge library of film and TV shows, removing said content from now-competition such as Netflix.
The confirmation came last week that Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars films would now call Disney’s service their new home, and Disney’s service is expected to offer around 400-500 movies and around 7,000 episodes of TV, which new original content in the pipe as well.
However, a new report from Business Insider suggests that the service will have to reel in a lot of subscribers just to break even. How many? A whopping 32 million.
The report suggests that amount based on estimating that Disney makes around $2.5 billion just from film and TV licensing alone, which is revenue that will effectively vanish with the new streaming exclusivity. If Disney charges around $9 a month – similar to many of their competitors – approximately 32 million subscribers would be required to break even.
Considering it took Netflix a decade to reach 50 million subscribers in the United States, that could be an issue for Disney. Of course, they have plenty of wealth to handle a monetary hit, and are likely considering the service to be a long term investment and would happily lose a little money in the short term if their streaming service is successful in the long term.
Disney certainly has the funds to compete with streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon, but can they garner enough subscribers early to deem their jump into the streaming world a success? And can they produce enough quality original content to keep subscribers, because it’s unlikely viewers will stick around forever solely for classic Disney movies.
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