ESPN+ Subscription Growth Exceeding Disney’s ‘Modest Expectations,’ Says Iger

Launching the Disney-branded direct-to-consumer service late next year will be “the biggest priority of the company during calendar 2019,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger on a Tuesday earnings call. The “first priority” with the new service will be “reaching the core Disney fan, and we certainly have a number of different company touch points to do that,” he said. Though still in the “early days” of the launch of the ESPN+ direct-to-consumer service, “conversion rates from free trials to paid subscriptions are strong and subscription growth is exceeding our expectations,” said Iger. Disney had “relatively modest expectations” going into the ESPN+ launch,” he said in Q&A when pressed for specific subscription numbers. “I'm not going to be specific on numbers. We're just not ready to get into that.” The company is “heartened by the fact that the conversion rates from free to pay have been quite strong and the trends that we're seeing in terms of churn are modest in nature in the sense that they're manageable,” he said. “We feel really good about how we are positioned and we'll continue to look opportunistically in terms of what rights will be available,” he said. “A lot of the rights in sports are already spoken for,” but there are still “opportunities to take some of the rights that we already own for the ESPN primary channels and move them along” to ESPN+, he said.