By
Mayowa Adebajo
February 13th, 2024
Disney’s disappointing first day for Disney+ which the company blamed on overwhelming brought millions of subscribers.
Disney’s much anticipated exclusive video streaming service launched a few days ago to a lot of fanfare. Joining a growing list of streaming services that are already in operation, Disney+ eventually opened the business for residents in both the United States and Canada.
The launch was however riddled with problems as there were several thousand complains especially on social media, about the inability to access the content with the company acknowledging the problems and promising its subscribers a quick solution. Disney had previously admitted that the problems were because the platform saw a lot more subscribers than envisioned. Now, the company has put a figure to the user subscription – 10 million.
Subscribers complained that not only were they unable to access the content because they were met with several error messages, but also that customer care was difficult to reach leaving a lot of users frustrated. The sheer number of downtime reports inspired the #DisneyDown hashtag which trended on social media for several hours. Considering the number revealed by Disney, it’s quite easy to see why there may have been problems.
A lot of streaming services have recorded similar problems on their first day of launch. Some already established ones sometimes experience these problems as well, especially when there’s a highly anticipated sports game or widely watched episode of a popular TV show.
Disney’s 10 million figure is very substantial, especially whenNetflix’s subscriber base is considered. Easily the largest streaming platform in the world, Netflix last announced that it had more than 158 million users on its platform. The difference between the two figures might not be that gaping when it is considered that Netflix launched “Video-On-Demand” in 2007, more than 12 years ago and pulled in just a little over 7.3 million throughout the year.
At the moment, Disney+ is only available in select countries including Canada, the U.S. and the Netherlands. It, however, plans to begin its spread to the rest of the world, beginning with India and other parts of Southeast Asia anytime from the third quarter of next year. According to TechCrunch citing sources familiar with the company’s plan, Disney+ will kick off in India via Hotstar, an already popular on-demand video platform Disney owns through its Star India subsidiary. Hotstar is expected to onboard Disney+ as soon as May when the Indian Premier League (IPL) for cricket is over. After that, Disney will spread Hotstar with Disney+ to Malaysia and Indonesia as well.
This, however, isn’t the first time Disney is entering the streaming business. Last year, the company began its foray with video on demand, when it launched the ESPN+ at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. A few months ago, it also announced that it had finally closed the deal that will see the company taking over full operational control of Hulu after it acquired Fox. Comcast, however, will still own Hulu until 2024.