The streaming bundle established last year by Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery could be “a game-changer” in the competition with Netflix and “a wake-up call for the industry,” a top research firm says.
Jonathan Carson, CEO of Antenna, said the company’s most recent findings show the bundle “is getting real customer traction” and is “just crushing it” in terms of subscriber retention. In fact, the firm said 80% of the roughly 1.6 million customers who signed up between July and December for the bundle of Max, Disney+ and Hulu were still subscribed three months later.
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That’s higher than Disney’s own bundle of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, Max on its own, as well as Netflix, all of which were in the 55% range. Netflix has significantly more programming (and no legacy networks to manage) and it has also long been the envy of the streaming sector for its knack for hanging onto fickle consumers.
The adoption rate of the bundle was 10% higher than the acquisition level of Disney+ and Hulu during the July-December span, Antenna said, and 20% higher than that of Max.
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The stats were in Antenna’s report on fourth-quarter streaming, which was released Tuesday. Carson addressed the findings later in the day during a webinar. Disney, which reported its most recent quarterly numbers earlier this month, has not disclosed any results from the bundle. WBD is set to report its earnings on Thursday.
“It’s still early, but we really think this is a wake-up call for the industry,” Carson said. “These cross-company bundles could really be a game-changer and a big part of the solution for the industry going forward.”
The showing is notable, Carson added, given how active the overall marketplace has been. “While we’ve seen lots of these inter-company bundles announced over the last several years, Antenna hasn’t really seen any of them break through in a big way, but the Disney-Max bundle is truly breaking through.”
Inter-company bundles are “complicated to negotiate,” the researcher added, “but even once theyt’re launched, the participating companies might be hesitant to put real marketing muscle behind them.”
In another notable data point, the average price of streaming services has risen sharply over the past two years. The cost of an ad-free plan rose 23% to $13.88; ad-supported plans increased 25% to $7.57.
Antenna’s data comes from a variety of sources, including digital purchase and cancellation receipts, consumer subscription signals, credit, debit and banking data reflecting the behavior of roughly 2 million consumers. After cleaning and modeling the raw data, the company weighs the panel to correct for demographic and behavioral skews.