Disney mess: suddenly closes sports to cable channels, annoying the public and achieving the opposite result
At Disney they must feel a little behind the wheel. Despite a quarterly report that seemed to be singing a victory, the stock is falling to its lowest level in 10 years, despite a very slight rebound on Friday.
The most burning problem for Disney is the failure of its streaming service: subscriptions have seen a considerable decline. Disney+ subscriptions fell from 157.8 million to 146.1 million worldwide, a loss of 11.7 million, more than doubling last quarter's record decline, and a decline of 300,000 units in the U.S. and in Canada, where subscribers fell to 46 million. It's only the second time Disney+ has suffered a decline in North America; last quarter was the first.
In the midst of this crisis, Bob Iger, the CEO with the mission of fixing the multinational's accounts, took the simplest, and most counterproductive, path: increasing the prices of the streaming service and starting the hunt for those who share passwords. A system that certainly doesn't make friends, however, as underlined by the trend in subscriptions even in the most advanced countries. But you can also do worse to annoy the public: you can interrupt the broadcast on the eve of a sporting event.
Disney owns ESPN, a very popular sports network in the USA which broadcasts, also through agreements with cable TV, as well as via the Disney streaming service. Obviously the multinational prefers direct subscribers to royalties obtained indirectly through cable TV. And here comes the stroke of genius: on the eve of Labor Day, a day of celebration for American football lovers, ESPN interrupted broadcasts on the second largest cable network in the USA, Charter Spectrum. As many as 19 channels went dark, due to a sharp cut by ESPN to 14 million US viewers who, enraged, suddenly found themselves deprived of college football which saw one of its key games on Labor Day.
The move caused very strong protests and is unlikely to have increased Disney+ subscribers. Not only that, but the Charter group, which owns Spectrum, didn't take it very well and immediately began to encourage its subscribers to migrate, for sport , to FUBO TV, a collection of slo-video streaming channels that offers, among other, video packages canceled by ESPN.
FUBO only offers pure video, so it's not exactly a Spectrum competitor, but it's definitely an ESPN competitor. For now there is no real agreement with Charter, but this could come in the near future, perhaps as an integration of streaming.
So Disney not only dissatisfied all Marvel fans with the latest indigestible "Woke" series, not only did it annoy, indeed practically destroyed, Lucasfilm with the terrible Star Wars sequels, Not only did it put the tombstone to the Indiana Jones cycle in in an ignominious way and by "killing" Shia LeBeuf, but she managed to displease even the kindest-mouthed public: the sporting one. What can I say, congratulations.
Don't be surprised if the stock is at lows, not seen for many years…
But there is still lots and lots of room to go down.
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The article Disney mess: sports closes to cable channels suddenly, annoying the public and obtaining the opposite result comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/pasticcio-disney-chiude-lo-sport-ai-canali-via-cavo-allimprovviso-indispettendo-il-pubblico-e-ottenendo-il-risultato-opposto/ on Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:48:29 +0000.