Star Wars TV Series 'The Mandalorian' Drives Higher Demand For Disney+

While a popular Verizon promotion has significantly boosted initial Walt Disney’s Disney+ subscribers, strong results can also be pegged to interest in its new big Star Wars franchise TV series, “The Mandalorian.”

Since starting the service on Nov. 12, Parrot Analytics says “demand” has been growing sharply -- up almost three times that of its initial weekly numbers, now at the 100.3 million average daily “demand” mark for the period from Nov. 17 through Nov. 23.

Demand expression comes from blog and microblogging sites, research sites (Wikipedia, Reddit, etc), review sites (Rotten Tomatoes, newspapers, etc), video sites for trailers (YouTube, etc), streaming and social media sites, Parrot Analytics says.

Initial metrics for the show, just after the premiere of the show, reveal that “The Mandalorian” had 39.9 million demand expressions  -- in third place among all digital original TV shows.

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Still, Parrot Analytics cautions: “While demand is a metric that should not be confused with subscriber numbers, this is a strong indication that the Star Wars series is driving a lot of sign-ups to the fledgling Disney+ service.”

Analysts also suggest a bigger influence came from a free-year of Disney+ (priced at $6.99/month or $69.99/year) for Verizon Wireless customers as a major draw. All that has pushed Disney+ to higher than initial estimates -- now at roughly more than 10 million subscribers.

After “The Mandalorian,” the top digital TV original programming for that mid-November period includes: Netflix’s “Stranger Things” at 81.2 million demand expressions, DC Universe’ “Titans” with 71.2 million, Netflix’s “The Crown” at 41.7 million, and Hulu’s “Castle Rock” with 30.8 million.

By way of comparison, top traditional TV network programming demand had NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” at 98.2 million.

This was followed by Nickelodeon’s “Spongebob Squarepants” at 97.1 million, Cartoon Network’s “Rick & Morty” with 95.9 million, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” at 79.4 million, Comedy Central’s “South Park” at 71.2 million; and AMC’s “The Walking Dead” with 70.7 million.

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