About a week and a half ago, I took some days off work and went through all of The Mandalorian on Disney+. Even though I grew up on Star Wars, I had low expectations because the sequel trilogy was incoherent garbage. I didn’t even bother to watch the last one, but I read the plot summary on Wikipedia and it seems like it makes 0 sense whatsoever.
But The Mandalorian actuallyturned out to be the best show that I’ve watched in a long time. It was so good it actually made me get back into the Star Warsuniverse again and I started watching the animated Clone Wars TV show that used to be on Cartoon Network (you can actually find the whole thing on YouTube).
Obviously, it’s not just me who got on the bandwagon. The Mandalorian is one of the biggest shows of the past couple of years, with Baby Yoda memes all over social media. This one show helped to put Disney+ on the map. While streaming companies like Quibi crashed and burned within six months, Disney+ is killing it with 86 million subscribers. Netflix didn’t get those types of numbers until 9 years after it first launched streaming.
Still, even though I love The Mandalorian, I was honestly pretty confused as to why Disney+ was doing so well. I scrolled through every other TV show and movie the platform had and there wasn’t really anything else I’d want to watch. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was missing the point.
Cheap prices: Good for customers and good for Disney
First off, we’ve got to remember that one reason that Disney+ took off the way it did was that it’s cheap. Right now, a monthly subscription is only $6.99. Disney also had a few promotional deals when the service was just getting started. If you used Verizon, you would get six months of Disney+ for free. If you signed up before the launch on Disney’s site, you could get 3 years of Disney+ for $3.25 a month.
Meanwhile, a Standard Netflix subscription is currently worth $13.99.
You might be wondering how Disney even makes money when it’s prices are so low. The answer is that Netflix and Disney are two entirely different companies. Netflix is a streaming business. Their revenue comes almost exclusively from subscriptions. To grow, they either need to raise prices or gain more subscribers.
But Disney is an empire. Streaming is just a small part of a much larger business. In 2019, the segment “Parks, Experiences, and Products” - which includes hotels, cruise ships, toy lines, and comic books - produced 40% of Disney’s total revenue.
At the end of the day, Disney+’s purpose isn’t to make money on streaming. It’s just a way to support the part of the business that’s generating more revenue. Low prices make sense because what’s really valuable for Disney is direct access to fans. Once someone is signed up for Disney+, the company can see the shows they’re watching and send them relevant offers like trips to Disneyland or Spiderman toys for the kids.
Disney’s advantage: The biggest entertainment franchises in history
But obviously, low prices alone don’t explain why Disney+ has been so successful. After all, Quibi offered users a 3-month free trial and still managed to shut down in 6 months.
To really understand Disney+, we need to remember that Disney owns the biggest entertainment franchises the world has ever seen. Disney bought Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm for $4 billion each, giving them the rights to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars.
This intellectual property gives Disney a huge advantage when compared to competitors. In 2019 alone, Netflix released 371 original TV shows and movies. But obviously, only a small percentage of those releases end up having a real cultural impact. For every Tiger King, there are probably 10 garbage shows that you’ve never heard of.
Side note: Not really related, but I never got the hype about Tiger King. If I wanted to see some rednecks going around saying stupid shit, I’d watch footage of the Capitol Riots.
But there are tons of loyal fans out there who’ll watch anything in the Star Wars or Marvel Universe. In the next year and a half, Disney is going to release shows about characters like Boba Fett, Hawkeye, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Loki. Anyone who ever liked Star Wars or Marvel will probably at least want to check them out. That means it’s way more likely that these shows will be culturally relevant than new shows on Netflix which are based on new concepts and don’t have existing fanbases.
Plus, Disney’s empire is so big that it can also keep you engaged with the universe in other ways. If you’re a Star Wars fan, Disney+ can ask you if you want to buy some Star Wars games, some Star Wars comics, or some tickets to a Star Wars theme park.
Disney+ isn’t really for guys like me
I might not really be that impressed when I’m going through Disney+’s library, but that doesn’t really matter. I’m probably not in Disney’s target market right now. But I might be ten years from now if I have kids.
Like I said earlier, Disney+ doesn’t have that much content, especially when you compare it to Netflix. But what Disney+ does have is every Pixar movie and almost every Marvel movie. If you’re a parent who’s tired of taking care of your kids and you just want them to shut up for a while, there’s more than enough material they can go through. That’s why around 50% of Americans who use the Internet and have children under 10 are subscribed to Disney+.
If you compare Disney+ to what parents had to spend for home video when I was a kid, it looks like a great deal. Back then, my parents had to buy VHS tapes to keep me and my sister quiet. In the 90s, just buying a tape for one new movie used to cost around $20. So paying $6 a month for unlimited access to Disney’s existing content library as well as instant access to any new TV shows and movies really isn’t that bad.
In conclusion
Disney spent a lot of money to acquire the most profitable entertainment franchises in history. Right now, they have a platform that pretty much gives you all the content you need if you’re a parent. Pretty soon, it will also have all the content that a Star Warsdork like me would need.
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