What you need to know
- During the Q2 earnings call, Disney announced that Japan will get Disney+ in June.
- We also have a more concrete timeline for Eastern Europe, which now looks to be coming in September.
- South America is still set to get Disney+ around the end of the calendar year.
- Disney+ now has roughly 54.5 million subscribers today.
Disney's earnings call was a bit of a downer today — Disneyland Shanghai is re-opening, but there's no guidance on when the domestic parks or film/TV product can restart — but Disney+ is still doing quite well, and we now know what countries should be getting the service in the next six months: Disney+ will be coming to Japan in June, and it appears both the Eastern Europe and South American launches are still on track for later this year.
Disney+ also updated its subscriber numbers, a month after announcing on April 8 that they has surpassed 50 million subscribers. Disney+ is now at about 54.5 million subscribers. This is a return to a more normal rate after a steep rise in subscribers in March, going from 33.8 million March 28 to 50 million by April 8 to 54.5 by May 4. The majority of that sharp increase came from Disney+ going live in Western Europe on March 24 amid stay-at-home orders.
During that Western Europe launch, a launch in Nordics, Belgium, Luxembourg And Portugal is now slated for September. South America was originally slated for the first half of fiscal 2021, and it is slated for the end of the calendar year, so that would put that launch sometime in mid-November or early December.
This was also a good quarter for Hulu, as it continued to hang onto its spot as the biggest streaming Live TV service.
Going global takes time, but we're off to a good start.
Disney brings all of its content under one roof for streaming after years of it being split on half a dozen services. It's not available everywhere yet, but we're over a dozen countries right now.
