The Walt Disney Company today closed out its fiscal year 2020, and in doing so dropped a bunch of subscription stats on us. And Disney+ — home to all things Disney, of course, as well as Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and National Geographic — now has some 73.7 million subscribers.
That's according to Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who also gave us updated numbers on ESPN+ as well as on Hulu and Hulu Live, which also fall under the larger Disney umbrella.
“Even with the disruption caused by COVID-19, we’ve been able to effectively manage our businesses while also taking bold, deliberate steps to position our company for greater long-term growth,” Chapek said in the earnings release. “The real bright spot has been our direct-to-consumer business, which is key to the future of our company, and on this anniversary of the launch of Disney+ we’re pleased to report that, as of the end of the fourth quarter, the service had more than 73 million paid subscribers — far surpassing our expectations in just its first year.”
Disney says a good chunk of the growth it's seen in the first year of Disney+ has been from its Disney+ Hotstar-branded version, which means India and Indonesia. All said, more than a quarter of all subscribers to Disney+ are of the Hotstar-branded variety, boosted by the delayed start of the Indian Premier League cricket matches.
Disney+ launched in November 2019, so these numbers represent the first full year of its existence. The service, which costs $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, was highly anticipated because it (mostly) brought classic Disney fare to the same service as other classics like Star Wars, and newer classics like Pixar and The Avengers.
And that's in addition to new favorites like The Mandalorian, the first series offshoot set in the Star Wars universe. Other original series are on the way, including WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Solider from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Disney+ saw meteoric growth from the start, amassing 2.86 million subscribers in its first three months of life, then nearly doubling to 5.45 million subscribers by the end of its second quarter. It then hit 5.75 million subs at the end of Q3.
Also helping boost Disney+ numbers is that it's available as part of an epic bundle along with ESPN+ and Hulu, which gets you all three of those services for just $12.99 a month. (And you can tack on Hulu With Live TV as well, for a grand total of $61.99 a month, which is just $7 a month more if you were to get that live service on its own.)
Disney+ is available on just about every modern streaming platform, including web browsers, Android and iOS, Apple TV and Android TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, smart televisions, Amazon Fire TV and more.
