Research: 7.6m UK consumers want Disney+ at launch
February 5, 2020
With more and more major film and television brands joining the band of VoD-streaming platforms and launching their own services, Disney+, in particular, is expected to ignite further competition, suggests the Goldmedia research and consulting group.
Up to 7.6 million consumers in the UK are already indicating that they want to use Disney+ when it launches on March 24th. However, more services will also result in increased user migration in the future: UK VoD users subscribe to an average of only two streaming services and want to spend no more than around £17 a month on them. Exclusive content will become ever more important, according to the company.
The announcement of the launch of the UK Disney+ service has generated a lot of interest amongst VoD users. Fifty-nine per cent of users have already heard about the launch of the new streaming service. The willingness to subscribe to the service is high, with around 35 per cent of VoD users indicating they would use the service when it launches. This corresponds to a potential of 7.6 million users (including password sharing).
Most potential Disney+ customers want to subscribe to the service in addition to existing subscriptions (71 per cent) and less than a third want to cancel another service for it (29 per cent). However, Netflix would not be the most affected by user migration, as is often predicted.
Only 2 per cent of Netflix users are considering leaving the service for Disney+. According to the survey, NOW TV and Prime Video are more likely to be affected with 9.7 per cent of NOW TV users and 7 per cent of Prime Video users considering leaving these services in favour of Disney+. Considering this, the planned integration of Disney+ on the Sky Q platform, as has already happened with Netflix, appears to be a good countermeasure.
According to Goldmedia, the key question for the future is how many streaming services viewers will subscribe to in parallel and what they are willing to pay per month. Most viewers in the UK currently do not want to subscribe to more than two services: for 70 per cent two is the maximum number. On average, VoD users in this country are prepared to pay £17 per month for video streaming.
With increased competition in the streaming market, about half of VoD users are willing to adapt their usage patterns accordingly. Many are willing to change their services more frequently – to whichever is currently providing the most exciting content. Content exclusivity plays an important role here: for 16.2 per cent of UK VoD users this would be a reason to switch service.
Password sharing is also likely to become even more relevant, as 15.8 per cent of users want to make more frequent use of this option in the future. 14.9 per cent of users would be willing to subscribe to another service in order to be able to view their favourite content. Advertising-financed platforms will also continue to gain importance, with 9.2 per cent of users increasingly switching to these types of services.
Illegal streaming is mentioned more frequently as an alternative, especially by young people. Overall, 8.5 per cent of VoD users will revert to streaming illegally more often if the content they want to watch is not available on the services they have already subscribed to.
“New streaming offers make the overall market more attractive,” advises Dr. Florian Kerkau, Managing Director Goldmedia Research. “This will also be reflected in a strong increase in usage. In addition to Disney+, we expect further leading companies to enter the market in 2020. That will make streaming even more successful overall. We continue to follow these developments very closely with our analysis platform VOD-Ratings.com as the independent voice in the market in many European countries.”