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Disney's Streaming Service and UB

Yesterday afternoon Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, announced additional details of Disney's upcoming streaming service.

For some background, Disney is one of the largest media companies in the world. Besides the Disney content many are familiar with, Disney also owns ABC, 20th Century Fox, FX, and others in full. Disney has a controlling ownership stake in ESPN and National Geographic. Not only is Disney owners of Star Wars and Cars, but they also own the rights to shows like Futurama, 24, M*A*S*H, The Simpsons, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Grey's Anatomy. The library goes back decades and includes content everybody from 5 to 105 can enjoy.

The service Disney is launching on November 12 will include Disney+, ESPN+, and ad-supported Hulu for $12.99 per month. While it is unclear which content will eventually make its way to Disney+, at launch the service will have more than 600 hours of content from National Geographic and nearly 300 hours of content from 20th Century Fox. Included in this is 8 Star Wars movies, 18 Pixar movies, and 4 Marvel movies. As to the future of Disney+ Bob Iger said:

Disney+ will ultimately become the exclusive streaming service for our vast library of movies and series, National Geographic content, all upcoming Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars movies and a robust slate of high-quality original programming from the creative engines that drive our entire company

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I first visited Disney World at the age of 25. As a kid, I did not have a ton of interest in theme parks and had even less of an interest in Disney. After agreeing to a trip that I was going to be on with or without my consent, I found myself on a plane to Orlando. The flight had a large amount of school-aged children, as it was a holiday weekend, and every single one appeared to be more excited than I was to be taking a 6pm flight without an empty seat on the plane. I expected this to be the theme for the trip. It wasn't that I was not excited to go to Disney, it was that I expected my experience in Disney to be a fraction of the "magic" that the screaming children on the plane would have.

I'll spare many of the details of the theme park as they are not very relevant. I had a blast. If you told me that I would set my alarm on vacation for something other than a football game, let alone to run into a theme park to wait in line for a ride for an hour (because that would be better than the six hour wait later in the day), I would have called you insane. If you told me I would brag about a perfect score on a Buzz Lightyear ride, I would have asked you why I was on a kid's ride to begin with. I am still not a huge Disney person, so it would be absolutely terrible if I had to go back to Disney.

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ESPN+ started just over a year ago with content from overwhelmingly second tier sports and Division 1 conferences. In fact, the list of conferences more closely resembles the conferences top-seeded basketball teams would play in their first round NCAA matchups than a lineup that would be picked up on cable television. The MLS coverage follows MLB's asinine model of only allowing out of market games. As many D1 football and basketball games are readily available on less-than-legal streaming services, my only reason to pick up ESPN+ would be for women's basketball and any Olympic sports I wanted to watch. Hardly worth it for $4.99 a month and the headache of canceling service in mid-March.

I suspect with the launch of Disney+, Disney will be extremely successful in obtaining subscribers. For a number of reasons:

People that already pay for ESPN+/Hulu

Hulu has approximately 28 million paid subscribers. ESPN+ already has 2 million people that forgot to cancel their subscription during the offseason subscribers. For these people it is almost a no-brainer to upgrade to Disney+. For $5-$7 a month one has exponentially more content. Those who might have been leaning towards subscribing to the other service previously will undoubtable upgrade to Disney+ to access all three services.

People with children

With Disney moving a large catalog of animated content to Disney+, parents will have a fast and easy way of accessing content that was previously released on a rotating schedule. No more trying to find the right connector from the VHS to a TV that only has HDMI ports, pay Disney $13 a month and you have access to it all.

However, what I think is a HUGE selling point for this product is that there will be content targeted for adults. If there is one thing I learned at Disney, it is that the theme parks are so successful because both the kids and the adults have fun. Disney+ will have similar success in the sense that kids will want their favorite animated kids content, and adults will want to watch National Geographic, ABC, and 20th Century Fox content. Where Netflix lacks (or will lack) in children's content, Disney+ will have a plethora of content. But once the kids go to bed, there is still TV shows for adults without an additional fee.

$13 a month gets the whole family access. Add in Hulu and ESPN+ as a bonus. Put in an antenna, and the $100/month cable bill turns into $13/month and a weekend project to attach an antenna to the roof.

How This Relates to UB

Imagine that with your Netflix subscription you get access to live sports. It isn't the highest level of sports, but it is something. When you want to casually watch TV or have it on in the background, would you put the live sports channel on? What if you knew the school an hour away had a football game on that night? I suspect that some will.

In the pre-ESPN+ world, MAC games would be accessible via WatchESPN, a service only available for cable/satellite subscribers. With the number of cable/satellite subscribers rapidly declining, especially among younger people, ESPN knew that they needed to innovate. The ESPN+ platform allowed this, but there was not "flagship" content to get people to subscribe. With the launch of Disney+, the flagship content exists, but is just on a different platform. The "lesser" content of out of market MLS games and lower level D1 sports is free/included in the "flagship" content's cost.

Where I see this helping is the casual fan. We saw this past fall that Buffalo wants to watch UB football on TV when WGRZ broadcasted the Toledo game. I suspect we will see a similar large viewership when UB plays Penn State in a few weeks on FOX. However locals do not follow nearly as much when it is hard to watch UB football. When it is easy to tune in, people will watch.

If Netflix's 60.2 million subscribers in the United States are spread out proportionally, about 221,000 of the Buffalo MSA's 469,000 households have a Netflix membership. This does not include the memberships that are shared between family members. Nearly 50% of the population has access to a Netflix membership. If Disney+ is as successful as Netflix is, a lot of Buffalo will have the opportunity to tune into the Bulls. People who have heard of the athletics program might turn the TV on. Those that might have seen a game before might watch the whole game or organize a watch party. Casual fans turn into season ticket holders.

I have long been a proponent of increasing access to UB games - you don't get people following a team by making them come to games. Blacking out games in the dorms would actually hurt the athletics program. If it weren't for the ability to stream Sabres games, I would not follow the Sabres. I would consider myself more engaged with Bills news now that the NFL blackout rule was abolished. If the Disney+ streaming platform is successful, it very much has the ability to grow UB's local fanbase and keep non-locals engaged.

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You betcha I'm taking one last chance to brag about that perfect score.

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