Digital TV Research analyst Simon Murray recently updated his forecast for Disney+ by predicting the streaming service will reach more than 194 million subscribers worldwide by 2025. Back in May, he predicted Disney+ would have 202 million subscribers worldwide by 2025 and in September projected 172 million.
“There seems to be a rapid slowdown in subscriber growth in countries after an impressive surge at launch,” says Murray about the recent update. He went on to say, “Much of Disney+’ initial growth came from the U.S., mainly due to the attractive bundle of Disney+ with ESPN+ and Hulu. More recently, India’s Disney+ Hotstar subs count has rocketed due to its coverage of IPL cricket. The U.S. and India will account for nearly half of Disney+’ subscriber base by 2025.”
Murray doesn’t expect the service crossing the 200 million user mark in 2025 anymore, he said: “Apart from India, with cricket driving nearly 10 million more subs for Hotstar in the quarter to September, there seems to be a rapid slowdown in subscriber growth in countries after an impressive surge at launch. Disney is very good at pre-selling and launch promotions, but subscriber growth seems to slow after this initial period.”
Disney+ announced on November 13th that the streaming service had reached 73.7 million subscribers worldwide only a year after its initial launch in the United States on November 12, 2019. The service is continuing to rollout in more countries including Latin America, Africa and the Middle East,with additional countries in Europe and Asia.
As a comparison to how Disney+ is doing in the streaming service market, Murray predicts Netflix will accumulate 274 million subscribers globally by 2025, Amazon will reach 167 million, HBO Max will get to 28.5 million, and Apple TV+ will hit 13.4 million.