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Disney Announces $12.99 Bundle for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+
- chovy 7y agoWill they also offer Fox Sports channels?
- sshuttari 7y agoI would assume No, It's interesting since Disney bought 20th Centuy FOX. But did it also buy FOX News and FOX Sports as well?
- jumelles 7y agoNo. Fox News, Sports, and Television are what's left of Fox Corporation. The sports situation is especially complicated, with international rights coming into play.
- sairahul82 7y agoAlso because Disney owns ESPN they can't own Fox Sports for anti competitive reason. They also let go Regional Sports Networks
- wcunning 7y ago"Now that Fox Corp. has sold off most of its entertainment properties, it has become a standalone company that will retain ownership of its broadcast network, owned-and-operated network affiliates, the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and Fox Sports." [0] [0] -- https://www.npr.org/2019/03/20/705009029/disney-officially-owns-21st-century-fox https://www.npr.org/2019/03/20/705009029/disney-officially-o...
- yumraj 7y agoIt seems NBA is not there in ESPN+, which is a bummer. Wonder if they will unbundle Disney+ or if this will be the only offering.
- docbrown 7y agoIt also looks to be no mention of streaming Premier League games. Does anyone know if NBC owns those rights to stream stateside? IIRC, NBC Sports is the Premier League hub while Fox Sports tends to host more Bundesliga (German football club) matches.
- jdietrich 7y agoNBC have the EPL rights until 2022. https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/chicago-fire/nbc-sports-retains-rights-premier-league-through-2021-22 https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/chicago-fire/nbc-sports-re...
- iends 7y agoNBC owns the Premier League rights and they split the games across NBCSN (primary channel), Premier League Gold extra (3 games a weekend, this dumb online service that's just a cash grab), MSNBC (1? game week), and another channel I can't remember (1 game week?). TNT has some of the champions league games, and the rest are on Bleacher Report Live -- some new paid online service. FS1/FS2 has Bundesliga and some MLS games. ESPN has Serie A, some MLS games. They also seem to have FA Cup, the Championship, and the Carabao Cup on ESPN+. This is pretty terrible compared to a few years ago. You could see all PL matches via NBCSN or their extra NBCSN extra channels. Some big games would be on NBC proper. Fox/FS1/FS2 had the champions league. Now things are more splintered and you have to pay extra to see everything. In addition to getting the channels, to watch the Champions League + Premier League you have to buy TWO online only services that are both $9.99/mo or $65 and $80 a year. For this season, the cheapest way to get NBCSN seems to be to use Sling Blue for $25/mo. FuboTV used to be really good, but it looks like they've basically been raising prices each year. Of course, SlingBlue doesn't come with ESPN/ESPN+ but it certainly covers most the PL games and part of the CL games.
- snaky 7y ago> $65 and $80 a year In a country with median hourly wage $18.58
- chrisseaton 7y agoTheir current Disney-only streaming service is $6 a month, for reference. So you're paying an extra $7 for Hulu and ESPN
- fcarraldo 7y agoDisney+ is different than the current service, and has not launched yet: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/disney-streaming-faq-price-release-date,news-27711.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/disney-streaming-faq-price-rele...
- chrisseaton 7y agoI think it just adds Marvel live action to the current service. Apart from that seems the same content to me? Everyone's talking about Disney+ like it's some mythical streaming service yet to be revealed that you can't already get as Disney Life. If you want to know what Disney+ will be like, presumably look at Disney Life.
- tempsy 7y agoThat does seem like a much better deal than Netflix. Side note: would love to see an extensive study on the subscription economy - stats on what the average household spends by category.
- ricree 7y agoWorryingly so. To my mind, the price looks intended to kill off other independent services, especially netflix. I can't see these deals lasting at all, but even three or four years could be enough to cripple Netflix so long as they are generous with their back catalogue and new releases.
- anaphor 7y agoWon't they just jack up the price each year like Netflix has been doing, in order to recover their original investment?
- adventured 7y agoI would expect Disney to be willing to operate at a loss for years on Disney+, in order to catch up some on subscribers. Investors will want to see sales & subscriber growth more than profit at this point, from that service. They're not expecting profit anytime soon. A failure on gaining subscribers will be a big hit to the stock however, it'll indicate a permanent subservience to Netflix in streaming. If they generate large subscriber gains, the market will reward them for it considerably and forward bet on eventual profits. Disney has $13.x billion in operating income, they can easily afford to try to tip over Netflix's money burning machine and try to hurt them financially. The $12.99 figure puts a further cap on the pricing power that Netflix has at this point, which is also a cap on their ability to fix their severe cash burn problem. Disney can play a long game and watch Netflix continue to drown in debt interest costs.
- skinnymuch 7y agoI think Disney themselves have said they want to incur heavy losses for 2-4 years on streaming. Key word “heavy”.
- mattl 7y agoI wonder how much for ad-free (Hulu already offers it) if that’s even a thing.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIt appears Hulu with ads is the only option for the bundle.
- patrickfatrick 7y agoWomp :(
- totalperspectiv 7y agoAnd we are one step closer to being back to cabel and likely a swing back toward pirating shows instead of working out what combo of 12.99 subscriptions are needed to watch some subset of shows and movies. I would honestly just like blockbuster back.
- jaredklewis 7y agoI found the selection of digitally rentable movies on iTunes and Amazon (not the streaming services, the pay per rental one’s) to be pretty good. If you are willing to pay to rent (ie the blockbuster model), I think either has a much larger and better selection than blockbusters ever had.
- adrianN 7y agoBlockbuster used to cost a Euro per day. 1.50 for new releases. Renting something from Amazon costs 3.99, about as much as buying a used DVD. I don't think that's a fair price.
- darrenkopp 7y agoMaybe that is what rentals at Blockbuster cost at the end of their run (or before they were super popular). I used to go to a wonderful local movie store for $0.99 - $1.99 rentals because blockbuster was $3.99+ a rental. Granted, that was for 5 days, but Blockbuster was definitely pricey in it's prime. Disclaimer: pricing is just based on one suburban area in the United States.
- ethbro 7y agoMy childhood video store had a 5 movies for $5 for 5 days deal. But that's easier with a back-catalog oriented clientele.
- adventured 7y agoOr often worse than $3.99 on new releases. Alita: Battle Angel is $5.99 to rent in HD right now on Amazon. Redbox is charging $2.12 for all Blu-ray releases on disc, including Alita. Their streaming version is also $5.99 in HD. Hard to imagine running those kiosks 24/7, maintaining them and stocking them is cheaper than serving up a stream version. They're no doubt charging $5.99 because they're confident that they can command it based on convenience (laziness factor). $3-$3.50 for a new release in HD is around the edge of reasonable in my opinion; and $1 to $2 for everything else.
- EnderWT 7y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20631123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20631123
- ingrowntoenail 7y ago.
- wolfd 7y agoYou should probably provide a link with that. I don't know if it's fair to say that everyone here is going to pay for this, or even was considering it. Perhaps a less blaming tone might help your case?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tzs 7y agoI've seen claims that Disney movies (including Pixar and Marvel) are only going to be on Disney+. What I've not seen is if that means that they will no longer show up on the Disney-owned cable channels like Disney XD and FXX, or it just means that they won't show up on non-Disney streaming services. I don't have kids, so it is not imperative that I stay current with Pixar and Disney animation, so I've just been waiting until they show up on cable. They are currently up to their 2016 releases (same for their Marvel and Star Wars movies).
- dmix 7y agoWhy would they cannibalize their TV network for some online play by significantly making their Disney channels worse? I can’t see any strategy in doing that...especially after they spent so much time resisting the idea (aka economics) of internet streaming.
- gravypod 7y agoThere could be much higher margins in the digital distributed content. Could also drive user signups if they run ads for "watch this movie you want to see for free for the first month".
- nobrains 7y agoWe will enter an era where you make a bundle subscription to all these services (Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) And then your monthly payment gets distributed by the streaming services based on the ratio of watching content from each one of them. This is technically doable now, so seems like the best subscriber/subscription-provider option possible.
- discordance 7y agoThat would be so good. Also one of the few places I could see blockchain actually being useful.
- xmprt 7y agoI don't know much about blockchain. Care to explain how this of all usecases is where blockchain shines?
- discordance 7y agoShared ledger between different providers so they can share who watched what and distribute funds accordingly.
- chenster 7y agoIs the Golf Tour Channel the same as the Golf Channel??
- nabla9 7y ago$156 per year. If Disney (DIS) keeps paying average dividend 1.25%, you can make them pay for the subscription if you buy DIS stock for $12,500. (more if you want to account for taxes, costs and their future price increases). I bought DIS few months ago when I realized how big the Disney+ launch will be. The price seems to be good without too much expectations.
- cryptozeus 7y agoI for one welcome this...more choices are better and it’s about time we get starwars on subscription
- DangitBobby 7y agoIt's not really more options if they took their offerings off of a service you already had (Netflix) so they can make you pay for it on a service you don't have yet. More options would be if they left it on both platforms so you could pick your fave.
- dang 7y agoFrom 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20631123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20631123
- blhack 7y agoI’m more bearish on Netflix’s long term sustainability lately. How many big show cancellations have recently resulted in massive blowback from huge swaths of fans? As much as those might seem like petty complaining from overly enthusiastic watchers, I think that Netflix should be more cautious. It’s caused me to get MUCH more skeptical about ever starting watching a show on their service, because I’ve see lots of times where the story never gets to see a conclusion. Netflix used to be a “no way I’m canceling this ever” thing for me. It’s not even close to that anymore. My intuition is that lots of people are the same. That should be concerning for Netflix investors. They also just recently spent $200M to hire the two people behind the catastrophic final season of Game Of Thrones. Game of thrones fans are numerous, and lots of them HATE that duo right now. That’s another huge group of people now actively looking for a reason to cancel. It feels like for a long time Netflix didn’t really have to care about customer experience or PR. They could do universally hated things like force auto playing previews on their interfaces, and basically nobody would leave because they had nowhere to go. Now: users are forced to use an interface which seems to actively make them upset while using it, to navigate through a bunch of options which might never actually have conclusions. That doesn’t sound like a good long term customer retention strategy. And then here comes Disney, with their MASSIVE catalog of shows with conclusions, for cheap. It’s not just Hulu vs Netflix anymore. Netflix: fix the interface and stop canceling shows without at least giving them conclusions. This stuff matters a lot!
- uxcolumbo 7y agoRE: fix the interface and stop canceling shows without at least giving them conclusions. In your view, how can they improve the interface - other than improving the recommendation algorithm. I find myself browsing their catalog for 20 minutes or so and then end up not watching anything. And totally agree with you on not cancelling shows. For example one of their better, more creative and daring shows was the OA. Cancelled. One of Netflix's USP could be that they are a place where people go to watch non lowest common denominator shows. But of course this takes time to get up the viewership numbers up and doesn't help them in the short term, hence why they have to cancel shows I guess.
- 7y ago
- Flow 7y agoI feel this fragmentation of where content can be found is going to cause a new wave of torrenting movies/series. I pay for 5 different streaming services right now, one is Apple Music. On Apple Music I can find, what I feel, like 90% of all music I want to listen to. On the other video streaming services it's a complete mess. They often show pictures of a movie/series on their front page, and later when I decide to watch it, it's gone. And gone from all of the services I pay for. This behavior is taking away the convenience and make me feel they are gaming me. I seldom go to iTunes and just buy some several decades old movie/series(you can't even buy series on iTunes in my country) when they do this, I either give up or torrent it(via VPN). Yeah, illegal I know. I'm not really wanting laws to change, but this behavior from the content owners in combination with their lobbying to make new laws to scan for content they own everywhere, lobbying for removing Internet anonymity, and having regular people pay damages that are more than they will earn in several lifetimes is not very constructive for the society either. I starting to think it's time for laws that, for example, force content owners to make their content available to 80% of the paying streaming watchers, or lose the right to the content.
- derekp7 7y agoThat's why I maintain my DVD Netflix subscription, and keep stuffing my Plex server.
- wscott 7y agoLegally I hope those 2 statements are independent of each other. ;-)
- scarface74 7y agoWith practically zero percent chance of getting caught, that is a much better alternative than torrents.
- derekp7 7y agoYep, that is why I phrased it that way -- plausible deniability.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dfeojm-zlib 7y agoI'd like Xfinity unlimited 1 Gbps ISP/unlimited landline/260 channels + Hulu + HBO + Netflix + Amazon Prime + Youtube Red + Spotify for one order of magnitude more. That I could get behind.
- tomohawk 7y agoIs there a bundle without espn? Bundling the sports channels on cable was one of the main factors driving costs. Also, not really interested in espn's politicization of sports.