Disney has a total of approaching 175 million subscriptions across Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu, including 116 million subscribers to Disney+, up by over 100% in a year. Quarterly direct-to-consumer revenues increased 57% to $4.26 billion, although they are still operating at a loss.
The number of Disney+ subscribers has risen from 57.5 million to 116.0 million in a year, up from 104 million over the quarter. That includes Disney Hotstar+ subcribers, which made up most of the net quarterly subscriber additions, accounting for almost 40% of the Disney+ subscriber base.
ESPN+ subscriptions have risen from 8.5 million to 14.9 million over the same period.
The number of Hulu Live TV subscribers decreased slightly by 100,000 over the quarter to 3.7 million. The total number of Hulu subscribers rose by 21% over a year, from 35.5 million to 42.8 million. Hulu turned to profit in the quarter, boosted by addressable advertising.
Direct-to-consumer revenues rose from $2.71 billion in the second quarter of 2020 to $4.26 billion in the second quarter of 2021. That represented almost a third of the media and entertainment revenues for Disney.
The operational loss on the direct-to-consumer businesses reduced to $293 million for the quarter, down from $624 for the same quarter the previous year.
“We’re proud of the success that we’ve had,” Bob Chapek, the chief executive of The Walt Disney Company told analysts. I would caution not to come to any conclusions about the size of the market. We’ve got a total addressable market of 1.1 billion households across the globe, and we’ve only just begun our journey.”
“I want to caveat that our sub adds aren’t necessarily going to be linear. I think a lot of the marketplace expects these things to sort of be a straight-line math and it’s not really turning out that way. And as we’ve indicated before, we do believe our first half adds this fiscal year will be stronger than the second half adds. That said, we really feel great about our trajectory.”
Disney+ will launch in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in November. The launch of Disney+ in Central and Eastern Europe has been put back until the summer of 2022, when the service will also be available in parts of the Middle East and South Africa.