Yesterday’s avalanche of new content announcements at its investor day conference very much confirmed Disney’s ambitions to take on streaming giant Netflix with its Disney+ streaming service.
With that comes a Netflix sized spending too though. Deadline reports that according to CFO Christine McCarthy, Disney will be forking out in the range of $14-16 billion annually in content spending by fiscal year 2024 on its three streaming services – Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ – as it ramps up its slate of original series and films to around 100 titles a year.
Between $8-9 billion of that is being earmarked for Disney+, at least double what was initially anticipated due to surging investment on original content. Approximately 63 series and 42 films were tubthumped at yesterday’s event alone with more than 80% of them heading directly to streaming worldwide through Disney’s own services.
Executive chairman Bob Iger says the original content slate has grown considerably “more robust that we had initially anticipated” due to the major uptick in streaming competition and the pandemic accelerating consumers’ move towards home viewing.
Disney+ is going up $1 in price in March next year to help compensate for both the increased slate of originals and revenue for content licensing slowing to a crawl as current contracts expire. The studio does confirm Disney+ will remain ad free with no plans for an AVOD tier that others like Peacock and Hulu use.
Across the three services Disney has a total of 137 million DTC subscribers as of last week. By 2024, they’re now targeting a total of 300-350 million total DTC subscribers by 2024 with 50-60 million for Hulu, 20-30 million for ESPN+ and well over 200 million subscribing directly to Disney+ itself.
