Disney To Launch Disney And ESPN-Branded Streaming Services

[osu1991]

Disney To Launch Disney And ESPN-Branded Streaming Services, Changing Netflix And BAMTech Deals

Look out Netflix: Disney says today that it will end its theatrical distribution deal with Netflix beginning in 2019 to feed its releases to a new Disney-branded streaming service launching that year.

The company also announced that its ESPN-branded streaming service, which it had previously discussed, will launch in early 2018.

 

[Zookster]

People have been clamoring for a la carte. Welcome to a la carte!

I hope Netflix doesn't have any plans to scrap its disc service anytime soon. I haven't had to do my 2-3 month annual disc subscription yet this year "to get caught up" on movies I've missed because of the Marvel and Star Wars movies popping up on NF streaming.

 

[ncted]

They have to do something to try to protect their declining ESPN revenues. Seems like all this will do is hasten the cord-cutting phenomenon for traditional delivery platforms. We can only hope it will help keep costs down for those platforms as well, for those who still want to have them.

 

[navychop]

This will just teach them how overpriced ESPN is.

 

[SamCdbs]

Disney's massive NBA overbid has put it in a catch 22 relative to ALC.

If a person is in the niche that cares about the NBA, or put up with paying for it to get access to the few other sports ESPN now covers (NFL, NCAAF&B and that is about it, yes, it has a little baseball, but so do 10 other channels) then that customer is happy to have traditonal cable/dish and thus let others pay for material they don't care about.

So the prospective cutomer for ESPN OTT is who exactly?

 

[navychop]

People unaware of other options?

 

[king3pj]

There’s no decision yet on whether to include Marvel and Lucasfilms releases.

“There’s been talk about launching a proprietary Marvel service and Star Wars service,” Iger says. “But we’re mindful of the volume of product that would go into those services. And we want to be careful about that. We’ve also thought about including Marvel and Star Wars as part of the Disney-branded service. But there we want to be mindful of the Star Wars fan, the Marvel fan, and to what extent those fans either overlap with Disney fans or are completely separate and incremental to Disney. So it’s all in discussion.”

This is the biggest part of this article for me. I don't care about the Disney animated films but the Marvel series are some of my favorite original content on Netflix.

I have been a Netflix subscriber since before they offered streaming. Netflix streaming has always been more about TV series than movies for me. That being said, once Netflix lost the Starz contract their movie offerings really went downhill. Bringing in Disney was the biggest thing they have done for movies in years. In addition to the Disney kids movies it also made them the home of Marvel and Star Wars movies. Losing all of that would really hurt their movie library.

 

[Zookster]

This is the biggest part of this article for me. I don't care about the Disney animated films but the Marvel series are some of my favorite original content on Netflix.

I have been a Netflix subscriber since before they offered streaming. Netflix streaming has always been more about TV series than movies for me. That being said, once Netflix lost the Starz contract their movie offerings really went downhill. Bringing in Disney was the biggest thing they have done for movies in years. In addition to the Disney kids movies it also made them the home of Marvel and Star Wars movies. Losing all of that would really hurt their movie library.

Netflix has also been losing TV series produced by other broadcast and cable nets as well. I wonder if this means all ABC and Disney Channel content will by leaving the service.

 

[Gobucks]

People have been clamoring for a la carte. Welcome to a la carte!

I hope Netflix doesn't have any plans to scrap its disc service anytime soon. I haven't had to do my 2-3 month annual disc subscription yet this year "to get caught up" on movies I've missed because of the Marvel and Star Wars movies popping up on NF streaming.

I don't think ala Carte would work like some people hope but atleast you can pick and choose what you want. Some might want Disney streaming and some won't. I think Dish made a great move with the locals as an option now. I hear they're getting rid of the flex pack. I hate that they are.

I enjoy the Marvel movies and usually get the BR and add the digital movie to my Vudu account. You can usually get them from Best Buy for about $19.99 on the day they go on sale. Some places and people will just sell you the digital code for $5 tp $7.

 

[king3pj]

Netflix has also been losing TV series produced by other broadcast and cable nets as well. I wonder if this means all ABC and Disney Channel content will by leaving the service.

That is one of the problems with multiple streaming services out there. Yes, competition is usually good but now we have Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime all trying to secure exclusive rights to every major series. It's to the point where you need to subscribe to all 3 of those services if you want series that all used to be available on Netflix.

I have the 4 screen Netflix plan because that is the only way to get 4K streaming. I share my Netflix account with my sister. She shares her Hulu account with me, and both of us have Prime for the shipping benefits. It's not ideal but it's way better than both of us paying for all 3 services.

 

[Ronnie-]

One could also alternate between Netflix and Hulu every month or so to catch up on what they are interested in. (I didn't include Amazon since I'll keep that for the other benefits anyway).

That's the benefit of the no contract services.