Walt Disney’s launch
of Disney+ on Tuesday overdelivered its results: 10 million subscribers since starting the service, according to the company. And investors liked it. Disney’s stock
closed up 7.4% to $148.76 on Wednesday.
Disney made big gains because of a big Verizon promotion that gave existing and new Verizon broadband customers a free monthly
subscription to Disney for the first year.
Disney+ is regularly priced at $6.99. A streaming trio of Disney streaming platforms -- Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu (on-demand) services -- is
priced at $12.99 a month.
Early reports said that Disney+ had massive streaming connection issues -- all due to an unexpected big rush of subscribers to the service.
But consumer
satisfaction of Disney+ is still largely positive.
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Social researcher Sprout Social says the first full day of Disney+ resulted in 1.15 million Twitter mentions -- with 36% positive, 15%
negative, and 49% unrated.
The number of Disney’s mentions was much higher than mentions for Apple TV+ at the launch date of Nov. 1 -- 69,904 Twitter
mentions, with 16% deemed positive, 7% negative, and 77% unrated.
Before the launch, MoffettNathanson Research estimated Disney+ could have 8 million U.S. subscribers at launch and 18
million by the end of 2020. Of the 18 million subscribers, under 9 million U.S. subscribers would be coming from Verizon alone.