After 24 hours, Disney Plus has reached 10 million subscribers, according to The Walt Disney Company. That's a strong start and might explain why there were more than a few reports of Disney Plus outages when the service launched in the US, Canada and the Netherlands on November 12.
Audience demand is certainly one of the reasons Disney has earned so many sign-ups so quickly, but there are a couple of other explanations of why that number is so high. For one, there's a 7-day free trial so you don't have to spend $6.99 a month – at least not right away. Alongside that, Verizon customers can get a year of Disney Plus for free under certain 4G, 5G and home internet plans.
Still, that's not to say Disney Plus isn't a significant draw by itself. Launching with an immense back catalogue of Disney titles, Pixar films, Star Wars sagas and 16 Marvel movies was always going to be a big deal. Globally, if you want a quick comparison, Netflix had 158 million subscribers, including free trials, as of July 2019, so Disney has some way to go. But it also has the rest of the world to go: the next launch comes in Australia and New Zealand on November 19.
Disney says it won't reveal more Disney Plus subscriber numbers outside of its quarterly earning calls, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That means we'll get the next update in February 2020.
How does that stack up?
Netflix has around 60 million users in the US, and that's a fraction of that big global figure. Hulu, meanwhile, announced in May it had over 28 million subscribers in the US. HBO Max, armed with the rights to Friends and launching next May, hopes to eventually capture 50 million subscribers by 2025. The odd one out is Amazon: it doesn't release official numbers around Prime Video.
Disney, for its part, is apparently targeting between 60-90 million users for Disney Plus worldwide after five years.
- Check out our Disney Plus review
- Here are the best movies on Disney Plus
- Here's the rundown of the Disney Plus price
