Analyst Predicts Disney+ Could Reach 60 Million To 90 Million Subscribers Earlier Than Expected

While Disney+ definitely had some technical issues on launch day, it overcame most of them pretty quickly, and in turn, scooped up a variety of new subscribers. That's an understatement actually, as Disney+ ended up bringing in 10 million subscribers on day one, which is insane. To put that into perspective, expectations for the service from Disney proper were around 8 million users by the end of 2019, so to surpass that number alone, nonetheless by 2 million, is quite a boon for Disney. That early start has resulted in Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives adjusting his mark for Disney's eventual target of 60 to 90 million global subscribers by as much as two years (via Variety), which is mighty impressive.

For comparison's sake, Netflix has been in the game over the past 12 years and currently sits at 60 million subscribers domestically alone, with 158 million subscribers worldwide. According to Ives' estimates, Disney+ could end up in the 100 million club in just three years, which is faster than even Disney predicted.

Helping Disney+ at the moment is a steal of a price ($6.99) and a host of pre-order deals and one huge deal that leverages Verizon's customer base, giving users of its Unlimited plans free Disney+ for a year. Cowen analyst Doug Creutz said "[T]he adoption curve is likely to be faster than any other OTT service to-date" thanks to the price, the brand's recognition, and Disney's marketing machine.

That said, while the Verizon deal acts as a great early boost but doesn't necessarily mean those customers will stick around after their free year according to Pivotal media analyst Jeff Wlodarczak. "What concerns me other than the one year free, which will obviously have no churn for a year, is that with limited original content, I feel like adults will burn through the content fairly quickly and you may have quite significant subscriber churn," Wlodarczak said. "There are still 33 [million] households in the U.S. that have children under 13, which is a significant market, but I would be very cautious extrapolating these unquestionably strong initial results too aggressively."

It remains to be seen if Disney+ can keep up the momentum, but the service is already hitting the ground running. If you haven't checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.

What do you think of Disney+ so far? Let us know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Disney!

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