In the fourth quarter of 2024, Disney+ Core, excluding India's Disney+ Hotstar, reportedly generated an average monthly revenue of 7.18 U.S. dollars per paying subscriber worldwide, marking an increase from the previous quarter of the same year. This drop is significant, given Disney's recent struggles to reach positive profits with its streaming division. Financial challenges for Disney’s streaming division In contrast to Disney’s direct-to-consumer business reporting losses, competitors like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery's DTC segment have managed to achieve operating profits. Furthermore, Disney+ has faced the challenge of retaining customers recently, and particularly the Indian brand Disney+ Hotstar experienced a decline in subscribers in the company's first two fiscal quarters of 2023. Disney’s diverse content catalog Despite this, Disney+ has emerged as a formidable contender in the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) landscape, fueled by its vast range of content from Disney’s various subsidiaries, including Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, Pixar, and Marvel Entertainment, making it appealing to audiences of all ages. The availability of popular original series like "Moon Knight" and "Obi-Wan Kenobi" exclusively available on Disney+ has further solidified its position as a leading player in the streaming arena.

Netflix's ad revenue was expected to surpass that of Disney+ in the United States in 2024, accruing 1.03 billion U.S. dollars compared to Disney's 911.9 million dollars. The gap between the two giants' ad revenue was projected to narrow in 2025.

Introduction

Disney+ Statistics:Â Since its launch in November 2019, Disney+ has become a strong competitor in the streaming industry. In the first quarter of 2024, the platform had 149.6 million subscribers.

This article will provide various Disney+ statistics, offering an insight into its performance, subscriber trends, revenues, and market standing.

Disney+ has experienced remarkable growth since its launch in November 2019, reaching around 125 million global subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. The streaming service's rapid ascent is particularly noteworthy given that it took Netflix, the current market leader, about a decade to achieve similar customer numbers in a less competitive landscape. Disney's biggest streaming competitor Despite its impressive subscriber base, Disney+ faces stiff competition in the streaming market, particularly among younger viewers. As of October 2023, Netflix remained the most-watched subscription video-on-demand service among U.S. children, capturing 34 percent of the audience, with Disney+ following at 31 percent. To address profitability challenges and retain customers, Disney has implemented strategies such as introducing extra member pricing in various countries, with costs ranging from 3.58 U.S. dollars in Hong Kong to 6.67 U.S. dollars in Italy. Market adaptation In response to the evolving streaming landscape, Disney has adjusted its pricing strategy. In late 2024, the company once again increased its monthly subscription prices for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ in the United States. This move followed significant improvements in the provider's direct-to-consumer streaming segment, with operating losses decreasing substantially between 2022 and 2024. Disney's DTC entertainment business, for example, reported an income of about 143 million U.S. dollars in 2024 after years of making losses, demonstrating that Disney's efforts to achieve profitability seemed to have paid off.

According to June 2022 projections, Netflix is expected to generate 150 million U.S. dollars in advertising in 2023. In early 2022 Netflix announced to its employees that it will be introducing ad-supported tiers to their tariffs at the end of the year. At roughly the same time Disney+ announced a similar move to the ad-supported video streaming - Disney+ is projected to generate 596 million dollars in ad revenue in 2023.

The operating income of Disney's direct-to-consumer business, including the streaming services Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, amounted to *** million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2025, marking a significant growth from the same quarter of the previous year. Like other U.S.-based media companies, Disney has struggled to make positive profits with it streaming division. As a result, the company announced cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs, reducing programming costs, as well as increasing subscription prices. In addition, the company formed a joint venture with Reliance Industries Limited in November 2024, transferring majority control of its Star India business, including Disney+ Hotstar.

In January 2022, the Disney + app generated more than **** million U.S. dollars in net revenue in nine Latin American countries. Brazil alone accounted for about **** million dollars – or ** percent – of the regional revenue. Chile followed with nearly **** million dollars – or ** percent of the net revenue the Disney+ app generated in the nine countries listed. The number of Disney+ subscriptions in Latin America was forecast to skyrocket by over *** percent between 2021 and 2026.

Disney+ generated a monthly app revenue of more than 4.4 million U.S. dollars in Japan in December 2024. The total app revenue during that year exceeded 49 million dollars. Disney entered the Japanese streaming market originally in March 2019 with its Disney Deluxe service. The service was rebranded as Disney+ in June 2020 and relaunched with additional features in October 2021.

Consumers in the Netherlands were the first in the world to try out the new Disney Plus (stylized as Disney+) streaming service. Starting Wednesday September 11 (Android) and Friday September 13 (iOS), Dutch residents were able to sign up for free for an early version before its release in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands on November 12. According to figures provided by Airnow PLC, the Disney+ app was downloaded nearly 133 thousand times to Android and iOS devices in November 2021. The source does not mention whether one download equals single person use or whether multiple persons in a household, such as children, use the app alongside their parents. In 2020, there were nearly eight million households in the Netherlands.

Why the Netherlands? Three main reasons are mentioned why the Netherlands became the test ground for Disney's video service. First, the country had relatively many high-speed internet connections. Second, the Netherlands is quite used to Video on Demand (VoD) as can be seen in the market size of Netflix and other domestic VoD services versus DVD and Blue-ray sales. Netflix's revenue in the Netherlands, for example, grew from 120 million euros in 2015 to 278 million euros in 2019. Finally, the Netherlands has no issues with the English language. This can be seen in, for example, the podcast listening behavior of Dutch consumers in 2019 and their preference for podcasts that were either partially or fully in English.

To Infinity, And Beyond? As of 2020, the Walt Disney Company's total assets were worth over 201 billion U.S. dollars. In the same year, the media company and owner of Pixar Studios, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic generated a global revenue of 65.4 billion U.S. dollars, the second highest figure to-date. The company is divided in four different segments: Studio Entertainment, Parks, experiences and products, Media Networks, and Direct-to-consumer & international. Streaming service Disney+ makes the high reach of "the House of Mouse" even bigger.

In the second fiscal quarter of 2025, the Walt Disney Company's experiences segment reported a net operating income of about 2.49 billion U.S. dollars. At the same time, the entertainment segment's net operating income amounted to around 1.26 billion dollars.

Between 2022 and 2024, the operating losses of Disney's DTC streaming business significantly decreased. In 2022, the loss of the entertainment segment stood at a value of around 3.4 billion U.S. dollars, while in 2024, it became income, amounting to about 143 million dollars. Similarly, the DTC sport segment's loss declined by over 500 million U.S. dollars between 2022 and 2024.

Disney+ Hotstar, India's leading video OTT provider, reported a revenue of over ** billion Indian rupees for the financial year 2022. Despite increasing revenue figures recently, the company recorded losses. That same year, this amounted to over ***** billion rupees due to high expenses. In November 2024, The Walt Disney Company entered a joint venture with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) that merged the former's Star-branded entertainment and sports channels and Disney+ Hotstar streaming service with RIL's channels and streaming service.

From 2023 to 2027, ad revenue of video-on-demand giant Netflix's is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 59 percent. Disney Plus and Paramount+ follow with around 37 and 25 percent CAGR, respectively.

During the third quarter of 2024, Disney+ mobile app reported around 4.5 million downloads from users in the United States. The service, which was launched in November 2019, generated approximately 8.12 million app downloads from U.S. users during the first half of 2024. In 2024, Disney+ was the leading mobile app among all Disney mobile services, with a global in-app revenue of 224 million U.S. dollars.

Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVoD) operators in Ghana were expected to reach a total revenue of 26 million U.S. dollars in 2025, with Netflix accounting for 20 million U.S. dollars of the total. The second highest provider for the same year was likely to be Disney Plus, with a predicted revenue of two million U.S. dollars. Also for 2025, it was estimated that Netflix and Disney Plus will achieve an increase of 19 million U.S. dollars and one million U.S. dollars in their earnings, respectively, compared to 2018.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, Amazon Prime Video was the most popular subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in the United States with a market share of ** percent, based on the users' interest in adding content to their watch lists of certain streaming platforms. Netflix followed closely with a market share of ** percent. Subscription streaming market – a money-losing business? While subscription streaming platforms increased their subscriber bases in the years 2020 and 2021 due to the measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 and 2023 saw services such as Netflix and Disney+ lose a substantial number of customers. Furthermore, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses of large media companies are struggling to turn a profit. Paramount, for example, reported a loss of *** billion U.S. dollars for its streaming services in 2023. Streaming companies take action In order to compensate for subscriber and income losses, streaming companies implemented several strategies, such as launching more profitable ad-supported tiers, cracking down on credential sharing, laying off thousands of employees, and spending less on content. The Walt Disney Company was already able to increase DTC profits recently. Its cost-cutting measures include layoffs and savings in content spending by reducing content produced and removing TV shows and movies from its streaming services.

In the first quarter of 2025, the Walt Disney Company reported that Hulu had 53.6 million paid subscribers, up from 49.7 million in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year. Hulu has several pricing plans to cater to varying consumer preferences, with the most basic option including ads costing 9.99 dollars per month and the priciest monthly subscription package fixed at 18.99 dollars (without ads) as of October 2024. In addition to that, many bundle options are available, including access to live TV, as well as to Disney+ and ESPN+. What is Hulu best known for? Hulu is often best known for the dystopian TV show “The Handmaid’s Tale” based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name or the comedy mystery series “Only Murders in the Building,” starring Selena Gomez. The shows have received a significant amount of media attention since their releases, and were among the TV shows with the highest amount of Emmy Awards nominations in the last few years. Hulu's history Content aside, Hulu’s past dealings with other media companies have also been a frequent point of discussion. The company was founded in 2007 and its board has included American investment firms as well as representatives from stakeholders Disney, Fox, and Comcast. A lot changed in early 2019 when The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox, a deal which generated enormous online buzz and which gave Disney a 60 percent majority stake in Hulu. Shortly afterwards, multinational conglomerate AT&T sold back its 10 percent stake to Disney. Finally, Disney announced in November 2023 to purchase Comcast's 33 percent stake in Hulu. Disney’s newest streaming service, Disney+, is available as part of a bundle including ESPN+ (for sports fans) and of course, Hulu, which will cater to more mature audiences whilst Disney+ takes care of the family-friendly content.

In May 2024, TikTok generated approximately three million U.S. dollars in revenues from iPhone devices in the United Kingdom (UK). Disney Plus followed, with more than 2.5 million U.S. dollars in revenues in the examined period. The YouTube app ranked third, generating approximately 2.3 million U.S. dollars in revenues from iPhone devices across the country.

Netflix's global subscriber base has reached an impressive milestone, surpassing 300 million paid subscribers worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024. This marks a significant increase of nearly 20 million subscribers compared to the previous quarter, solidifying Netflix's position as a dominant force in the streaming industry. Adapting to customer losses Netflix's growth has not always been consistent. During the first half of 2022, the streaming giant lost over one million customers. In response to these losses, Netflix introduced an ad-supported tier in November of that same year. This strategic move has paid off, with the lower-cost plan attracting 70 million monthly active users globally by November 2024, demonstrating Netflix's ability to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer preferences. Global expansion Netflix continues to focus on international markets, with a forecast suggesting that the Asia Pacific region is expected to see the most substantial growth in the upcoming years, potentially reaching around 70.1 million subscribers by 2029. To correspond to the needs of the non-American target group, the company has heavily invested in international content in recent years, with Korean, Spanish, and Japanese being the most watched non-English content languages on the platform.

As of the first quarter of 2024, the leading streaming service in the Philippines was Netflix, dominating the market with a ** percent share. Netflix was followed by iflix, with a ** percent market share. Video streaming: a growing market in the Philippines Since 2017, there has been steady growth in both the penetration rate and revenue of video streaming services in the country, and this upward trend was forecast to continue for several more years. Adoption of video streaming platforms were boosted by an increasing demand for both local and international shows and video content, usually because of the ability to stream them for numerous hours. Netflix trending throughout Southeast Asia The number of Netflix subscribers in Southeast Asia has increased substantially recently, followed by growth in the company’s revenue in the region. As the number of pay-TV subscriptions is expected to increase in various Asian countries in the near future, streaming services such as Netflix will likely continue their upward trend.