Disney’s latest earnings report came out Wednesday, and while streaming subscriptions dropped off overall, ESPN+ subscriptions did not.
Subscriptions to ESPN+ ticked up over 25 million to 25.3 million. Three months ago, the service sat at 24.9 subscribers.
Average monthly revenue per subscriber also increased this month for ESPN+ to $5.64, up from $5.53 at the end of the last quarter.
For whatever it’s worth, ESPN is pulling nearly $430 million per quarter from ESPN+ at those marks.
However, that’s a drop in the bucket in Disney’s overall streaming revenue. The company brought in $5.514 billion in revenue from streaming services in this quarter, with less than 10% coming from ESPN+.
While Disney doesn’t break down linear revenues by network, streaming still brings in less revenue overall than traditional linear carriage. Disney’s revenue from its linear networks this quarter was $6.625 billion. That’s still a gap of over $1 billion, but the gap is closing. In the similar quarter last year, the gap between streaming and linear revenue was over $2 billion.
Just keep that information in mind when talking about a linear ESPN direct-to-consumer offering. Linear carriage is still quite valuable and important for Disney, and there’s no urgent need to go DTC any time soon with ESPN’s linear networks.
[Disney]
