After Netflix fell from grace and CNN+ died on the vine, all eyes were on Disney+ as an indicator of whether streaming services were in big trouble. The answer, at least for Disney, is no. The company reported subscriber growth in its earnings call on Wednesday that beat Wall Street's expectations.
Disney+ added 7.9 million subscribers this quarter for a total of 137.7 million, topping analyst expectations of 135 million, according to CNBC. Subscribers are up 33% from the year-ago quarter, when the service had 103.6 million subscribers, and average revenue per domestic subscriber is $6.32, up 5% year over year. Disney now has a total of more than 205 million subscribers across all of its streaming services, adding a combined 8.6 million net subscribers on all platforms.
“Our strong results in the second quarter, including fantastic performance at our domestic parks and continued growth of our streaming services — with 7.9 million Disney+ subscribers added in the quarter and total subscriptions across all our DTC offerings exceeding 205 million — once again proved that we are in a league of our own,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said on the company's earnings call.
Despite the company's better-than-expected performance in the streaming sector for the quarter, it still faltered slightly in trading after market close, its share price dropping a little over 3% due to the COVID-19 closures of its theme parks in Asia.
Disney's subscriber boom comes at a rough time for its rival Netflix, which reported its first subscriber loss in a decade in the most recent quarter, dropping around 200,000 users in the past few months and sending its stock tumbling. Netflix attributed the loss to password sharing, an issue which Disney is reportedly looking at tackling as well: The company recently sent out a questionnaire to subscribers in Spain asking why they are sharing their Disney+ passwords with people outside of their households (to which people mostly responded that they simply don't want to pay).