A case in point: Disney - who announced on Tuesday that they are pulling their films from Netflix and aim to launch their own streaming service in 2019. It is also being reported that Disney aims to launch an ESPN streaming service by early 2018.
BusinessBuzz
Disney is gearing up to launch its own streaming service and pulling content from Netflix.
When Netflix, the streaming giant that has rewritten industry rules, first knocked on our doors, it was a novelty and a relatively cheap method that offered access to global content. But just a few years later, having your own streaming service is all anyone can think about in Hollywood. A case in point: Disney - who announced on Tuesday that they are pulling their films from Netflix and aim to launch their own streaming service in 2019. It is also being reported that Disney aims to launch an ESPN streaming service by early 2018.
According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, Disney will meet this goal by acquiring a majority in BAMTech, a “streaming technology company owned by MLBAM, the internet company owned by Major League Baseball”. Disney already has share in the company but will pay an additional $1.58 billion dollars to attain another 42 percent shares.
CEO Bob Iger explained that if a film is Pixar or Disney-branded, it will appear exclusively on the new service in addition to shows and films made specifically for the service.
This means that Frozen 2 will land on the service exclusively while Star Wars and Marvel Films could find themselves on rival services. “It’s high time we got in this business,” Bob Iger said on Tuesday. “The profitability, the revenue-generating capability of this initiative is substantially greater than the business models we’re currently being served by.”
What this means for Netflix is anyone’s guess. Obviously, the $6 billion Netflix spends annually on original programming will continue to play a crucial role in its popularity but in the absence of major titles, will the service remain as popular as it currently stands?
Indie Wire notes in a piece: “Will Netflix content be good enough? While they have a handful of popular originals, much of Netflix’s viewership is believed to favor repeats of popular broadcast shows past and present. If Netflix loses that privilege, consumers will face subscribing to multiple over-the-top services, cherry picking the two or three that best satisfy their interests.”
While on the surface, it seems that there are two streaming giants vying for supremacy, in reality the number for such services has grown significantly. Everyone has skin in the game. For instance, CBS has CBS All Access. HBO has HBO Now; FX and AMC have announced plans “to test the premium streaming marketplace” as well.
ESPN streaming service will gain the top spot for sports fans as it will contain 10,000 live sports events a year; Disney service will offer Disney and Pixar titles, as well as programming from Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD.
Content from ABC and other shows will remain at Hulu, the streaming service in which Disney owns a stake. As it stands, Netflix has a global reach few can match but with so much happening, the future might mean a scenario where “it will be just one of many options.”
