On Wednesday, Disney held its earnings call for the second fiscal quarter of 2022, revealing a gain of 7.9 million Disney+ subscribers, which brings the platform’s total global subscribers to 137.7 million. (Adweek)
Disney is quickly closing in on Netflix’s long-established streaming lead. The entertainment giant now has 205 million paid subscribers across all of its services globally, while Netflix has 221 million. (Axios)
Revenue at Disney increased 23 percent compared with last year, to $19.2 billion, but missed analyst expectations. Disney said it took a hit from a decision to pull some of its content back from other distributors in favor of its own channels, which meant a reduction of $1 billion in licensing revenue as part of a trade-off to grow its direct-to-consumer business. (NYT)
Streaming led the way, with revenues up 23 percent to $4.9 billion. Linear networks were up 5 percent to $7.1 billion. Hulu added 300,000 subscribers to reach 45.6 million subs and ESPN+ added 1 million subscribers to reach 22.3 million. (THR)
Disney bosses said ESPN could one day be a fully stand-alone streaming service—just not yet. On the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings conference call Wednesday afternoon, an investor asked CEO Bob Chapek what was holding the company back from expanding it as an all-in-one service. (TheWrap)
In another bid to spur streaming growth, the media conglomerate plans to launch a cheaper, advertising-supported version of Disney+, initially in the U.S. before the end of 2022. (Variety)