Disney goes for Netflix’s throat with new streaming bundle

Disney+, Disney’s upcoming streaming service, drops on November 12 of this year, and the media giant is doing everything it can to make sure you sign up. The depth and quality of Disney’s catalog is well-known, particularly now after it’s purchased 20th Century Fox. It’s also mounting a bunch of buzzy original series, including a live-action Star Wars show called The Mandalorian and a bunch of stuff set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it’ll all be available for a monthly rate of $6.99. How can you not get it?

Well, just in case you had any doubts, Disney is sweetening the pot further. During an earnings call earlier in the week, Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that the company will offer a streaming bundle that includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ all for $12.99, to drop on the same day as Disney+. Bought separately, those three services would run people $17.97.

The price point is significant, because $12.99 just so happens to be the price of the “standard” Netflix subscription. Iger claims that the price match is a coincidence (“We’ve always believed there’s plenty of room for both of us to thrive in this marketplace”), but with Netflix losing big draws like Friends and The Office and Disney making fans an offer they can’t refuse, it’s looking more and more like the company doesn’t just want to coexist in the streaming space, but rather dominate it.

And that would pretty consistent with how Disney has been behaving for a while. The year is just over halfway through, and Disney has already made more money in 2019 than any studio has made in any year ever, and that’s with big movies like Frozen 2 and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker still to come. It’s hard to overstate how badly Disney is crushing it right now.

Which is why it comes as a bit of a surprise that the company’s stock tumbled 3% following the call. As much money as Disney is raking in — $20.2 billion in the third fiscal quarter, up from $15.2 billion — it still fell short of the $21.4 billion analysts expected. And while revenue went up, net income went down, from $2.92 billion last year to $1.76 billion now.

Disney blamed the drop on the process of integrating Fox properties into its business. And let’s remember that Disney makes money from more than just movies. There haven’t been as many visitors to the newly established Galaxy’s Edge theme park as Disney was hoping, for instance, which could also be a drain on income.

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But even with all of that, it’s pretty surreal to see Disney be deemed to have a disappointing quarter after it made over a billion damn dollars in profit, but corporate America is weird like that. Stock drop or no, Disney is a monolith, and its hegemony over the entertainment industry is only growing.

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h/t Miami Herald, CNBC, CNBC, Screenrant