ESPN+ Hits One Million Streaming Subscribers In First Five Months
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After years of friction over the direction of its direct-to-consumer strategy, Disney has just claimed major bragging rights with ESPN‘s announcement that streaming service ESPN+ has reached
1 million subscribers in its first five months.
ESPN+, which features Major League Baseball as well as college sports, boxing, soccer and the UFC, is the first of Disney’s direct-to-consumer offerings planned in the coming months. The
general entertainment offering, which will include original movies and series as well as titled pulled off of Netflix, is slated to launch by the end of 2019. The drive to own content that
can power streaming services capable of competing with Netflix and other rivals is the main reason the company is paying $71.3 billion to acquire most of 21st Century Fox. The merger is
expected to close in the first half of 2019, though it has cleared most major hurdles and could be wrapped up even sooner.