ILLUSTRATION: BERKE YASIKIOGLU099 NETFLIX VS DISNEY(In 2019, for example, it claimed three
Oscars with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.)
Disney has the production power to
attract subscribers, with three of the top
five grossing films in 2018. And in 2019,
Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King,
Captain Marvel and Toy Story 4 sit at
the top of the charts. Moreover, Disney
has commissioned new Star Wars
series The Mandalorian specifically for
Disney+. Netflix has struggled to create
film franchises, but has had success
creating series such as Stranger Things
and Orange is the New Black.
However, Disney’s streaming capabil-
ities are yet to be tested at scale. It
has children-focused Disney Life in
the UK, and sports streaming through
ESPN+ in the US, but neither serves
tens of millions of people simultane-
ously. Disney has yet to prove it has the
technical capability to create a system
that’s easy to navigate, user-friendly
and able to keep people watching.
Apple has the opposite problem. With
more than a billion iPhones and iPads
in circulation, it has a simple way to put
out its TV offering – one update to iOS
and everyone gets a new streaming
icon. Where it lacks experience is in
content. The roster of stars it has
signed up for Apple TV+ includes
Steven Spielberg, Reese Wither-
spoon, Jennifer Aniston and Oprah
Winfrey. But the company is known for
being family friendly and risk averse,which perhaps explains why it has so
far failed to announce any shows that
really surprise or delight. In September
2018, the Wall Street Journal reported
that Apple CEO Tim Cook had objected
to Vital Signs, a drama about hip hop
star Dr Dre which featured cocaine use
and an “extended orgy” scene.
But the biggest impact of the
new streaming services may not
be in what they offer, but what they
take away from Netflix. “The greater
impact of Disney’s launch will be that
all Disney content will be off Netflix
by 2020,” says Michael Pachter, of
analysts Wedbush Securities, who has
frequently predicted Netflix stock is
due to decline in value.
On top of this, Friends and The
Office are set to vanish from Netflix’s
library in 2020 – and in a poll by The
Hollywood Reporter, 49 per cent of
Netflix subscribers aged 18-29 in the
US said they would cancel if these two
shows and Disney content were pulled.
But for now Netflix has one final
trump card: in terms of brand recog-
nition, it’s the first place users often look
for new shows. Want to see if something
is streaming? A Google search usually
includes the word “Netflix”. “They’ve
branded it where they are the repository
of all television ever made,” Pachter
says. “So we will type in ‘I Love Lucy
Netflix’, which isn’t there, but we’ll just
assume maybe it is.” Matt BurgessDisney has the production power to attract
subscribers, with its 2019 films set to
emulate its top-grossing output of 2018NETFLIX IS UNDER SIEGE. TWO
decades after it was founded, and
almost ten years since it moved into
streaming, its competitors have woken
up – though Netflix’s position as the
streaming king won’t be seriously
challenged for most of the next decade.
The firm has built up a critical mass
of 150 million subscribers, streams
in almost every country in the world,
and since 2012, has been making its
own Netflix Originals programming.
In 2013, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief
content officer, said the company was
racing against HBO to create the future
of television. “The goal is to become
HBO faster than HBO can become us,”
he said. Netflix arguably achieved this
in 2018, when it earned more Emmy
nominations than HBO for the first time,
while in the same year Now – HBO’s
over-the-top streaming service –
languished at five million subscribers.
But the pressure is intensifying, with
the launch of international streaming
services Apple TV+ and Disney+ in
November 2019. Moreover, Warner-
Media, the owner of HBO and Warner
Brothers, and NBCUniversal are set to
launch proprietary streaming services.
These new rivals will join original
programming efforts from Amazon
Prime and YouTube, plus traditional
broadcasters, in trying to topple Netflix.
In the UK it has to contend with Sky’s
Now TV and the upcoming Britbox, a
joint BBC and ITV venture. In India,
Walmart-owned Flipkart launched its
own streaming service in August 2019.
Once Netflix’s competitors have
launched their services, the tedious
work of growing customer numbers
begins – a process that won’t see
quick results, even with the deep
pockets of Disney and Apple. “There’s
absolutely no way that Disney will
overnight become as big as either
Netflix or Amazon – it’s going to take
Disney well into the 2020s,” says Tony
Gunnarsson, a principal analyst at
Ovum, specialising in pay TV and OTT
video. In the US, Netflix took around a
decade to reach 65 million subscribers.
For rivals, the main challenge is
that Netflix simply has the most
complete offering. The platform is
technologically capable, with enough
experience in creating its own shows
and films to align itself with the
entertainment industry’s big-hitters.11-19-FTGoogleStadia.indd 99 13/09/2019 11:11