BB Media: A new era for Disney+: From family fun to broad appeal

Delfina Gianibelli, media analyst, and Florencia Figari, insights & Research Team Leader at BB Media, analyzed the new era for Disney+ following its merger with Star+.

Both asserted that the streaming world in Latin America is rapidly transforming. After last year’s rebranding and merger of HBO Max and Discovery+, two other notable platforms have decided to follow this strategy. On June 26, Disney+ and Star+ unified under the enhanced and more comprehensive platform: Disney+. Data collected in the first quarter of this year shows that approximately 29% of households with internet access in the region were Disney+ consumers. Additionally, 23% of households with internet also watched Star+ content, making these platforms two of the five most consumed in the region.

This transition will give Disney+ subscribers access to the full catalog of The Walt Disney Company, along with content from ESPN, 20th Century Studio, Searchlight, and FX that was previously available on Star+. To attract users, the updated platform will continue using the Star+ brand for its well-known originals. Additionally, ESPN will remain a separate entity within the platform, keeping its unique logo available for users to access sports content.

This combination will offer a more diverse collection of content to users, as Disney+ was previously geared towards more family-oriented movies and series. Before this transition, the main genres on the platform included comedy, adventure, family, documentary, and animation.

Meanwhile, the dominant genres on Star+ consisted of drama, comedy, action, documentary, and crime. This disparity in content is evident as drama significantly outpaced any other genre on Star+, but did not appear among the top five genres in Disney+’s previous catalog. Additionally, 15% of the titles available on Disney+ were classified as family content, ranking as the third most frequent genre, which did not even make it into Star+’s top 15 genres.

Since the transition, the amount of content classified as drama has drastically increased, becoming the second most featured genre on Disney+. While adventure, family, action, and animation have maintained their positions among the top seven genres, their offerings have been surpassed by the documentary genre, now ranking as the third most prominent genre on the enhanced platforms.

In comparison, with the unification of HBO Max and Discovery+, the distribution of content genres on the platform retained its top three genres (drama, comedy, and documentary), with only minor changes in the rest of the content share. After the merger, reality shows, a strong content category within Discovery+, grew drastically within the Max catalog, now representing 7% of the platform’s content. To put this in context, before the unification, reality shows were not present among the platform’s top 20 genres.

In all of Latin America, prior to the merger, both Star+ and Disney+ offered a similar number of titles (1,500 and 1,703 each, respectively), with only a slight difference leaning towards Disney+. Both platforms had a large collection of recent releases, with 67% of Star+ titles and 48% of Disney+ titles released in 2022 or 2023. This small difference may reflect the varied release dates between each platform in the region, as Disney+ was introduced almost a year before Star+, in 2020.

The enhanced platform is expected to add at least 16 more titles in the coming year. Of the 16 titles announced so far, 50% are new releases. Additionally, seven of the 16 titles are platform originals, including some of Star+’s most successful series, such as The Bear (2022) and El Encargado (2022). Most of the titles announced to be added will be dramas, followed by animation, adventure, action, and comedy.

Both Disney+ and Star+ had created and offered an extensive collection of original content, with Star+ leading. Overall, Star+ had a greater emphasis on the original series, representing 77% of the catalog. In contrast, only 39% of Disney+’s originals were listed as series. After the merger, Disney+ will provide users with a larger number of originals and offer a better balance of different types of content. Specifically, the current catalog has doubled its number of original titles compared to the previous Disney+.

Analyzing local originals reveals a greater disparity in the previous catalogs of the platforms, with Star+ previously containing nearly 44% more titles than Disney+. But how is Disney+ positioned after the merger with Star+ compared to other major players in the region?

After the merger, although Disney+ is still far from reaching the number of titles offered by well-established platforms in the region like Netflix and Prime Video, it has significantly closed the gap with Max’s content offerings. This reduction is evident in both the total number of titles and the number of original and local productions currently offered by both platforms.

In addition to expanding its content, Disney+ has innovated by adding live channels after the merger. Previously, sports events were scattered or segmented by sport within Star+, but on the newly merged Disney+ platform, they are now included within ESPN channels, making it easier for users to find them. On the other hand, special events such as concerts or awards will be available directly on the platform, outside these channels. Users of the Standard Plan or the Standard Plan with Ads will have access to two live ESPN channels, while those on the Premium Plan will have access to four, except for Premium users in Brazil, who will have access to two additional live channels: ESPN 5 and ESPN 6.

The entertainment industry is very dynamic: with new content being created and distributed constantly, new platforms are simultaneously being created and introduced to the public. This surplus of online subscription services can sometimes overwhelm users, leading to consumer fatigue and potential deterrence from a platform. The Walt Disney Company’s strategic decision to consolidate titles through the unification of these preexisting services could help counteract this concern by introducing a larger and more inclusive catalog accessible through a single service.

Not only has the total number of titles increased significantly, by nearly 60%, and therefore the Disney+ catalog, this consolidation brings a more diversified distribution of genres and types of content. This transition is especially notable considering that Disney+, before the merger, emphasized its family-friendly content and features. After the merger, the prominence of Family and Animation titles has significantly decreased relative to other more mature genres like Drama. This transition, along with the addition of live sports streaming and the increase in original and local titles, reduces the need to focus on a specific target audience or demographic, as the new platform is likely to attract people of all ages and interests.

The large amount of content and the increased variety in content options may also bring the platform closer to acquiring the same volume and diversity of titles as its main competitors. Consequently, this could enable Disney+ to continue expanding in the streaming market within Latin America.