Almost everyone grew up with Disney. Our generation did, our parents, and pretty much everyone born after the release of the first animated Disney film in 1938. Disney has films, TV shows, theme parks, endless merchandise, and in just a few weeks, a streaming service. The company is worth about $130 billion. If you examine what actually falls under "Disney," you may notice their collection keeps growing. With everything the company owns, Disney is close to becoming a monopoly in the entertainment industry.
A monopoly is defined as "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service." So Disney is not a true monopoly, but they're certainly dominating the industry and buying everything they can. The Walt Disney Company is a "multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate." A conglomerate is a combination of multiple business entities operating in entirely different industries under one corporate group.
Disney has bought many well-known companies and properties, such as Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, ESPN, National Geographic, and ABC. The company owns an enormous amount of franchises and networks. This becomes evident, and important, when it comes to what Disney wants to do with all these properties. In the past, Disney has made it clear they are very protective and exclusive with what they own, particularly with their strict copyright laws. Now, Disney plans for the launch of their entertainment streaming service Disney+. Other streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have been able to pay to have Disney films or shows to make them available to watch on their services. However, Disney will remove all properties from these other services and put their films and shows on Disney+. This means that if a consumer wants to stream a Disney property, they must use Disney+. Disney is taking control of the supply and trade. They own so much of the entertainment supply- not every single movie or franchise, of course, but such a large amount- and are even creating Disney+ exclusive content. They're taking control of the trade by only allowing the content to be streamed through them. Of course consumers could rent or purchase Disney films and shows instead, but that money would still be going to Disney. If a consumer wants to stream Disney, they must pay for Disney+.
Disney is not exactly a true monopoly. There are still other options for consumers, so there is definitely still competition. However, they own so much content that their new streaming service will be the only one with many fan-favorites. Their properties are not just family friendly animated films, but also nostalgic shows, educational content like from National Geographic, adult-targeted series, and much more. With everything Disney owns, it looks like the company has set itself up for a successful launch of a new service.
Sources:
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/is-disney-dis-a-monopoly-970f1cbf9a3
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly
https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/how-much-is-disney-worth/
This is an interesting post. It would be cool to see what percentage of shows or movies on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu are Disney to understand the real impact Disney+ will have on their competitors. I think that it will be interesting to see how many people actually switch their streaming accounts over to Disney.
ReplyDeleteThis is a super cool post. It is interesting that Disney is not considered a monopoly despite the fact that it dominates so much of the movie and TV show industry. It is sad that Disney has begun to take shows and movies off of Netflix and put them on their own streaming platform. If they take too many off I might have to start an account with the Disney platform.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting, especially concerning what will happen to Netflix once Disney+ is released. I found that about 12.5% of movies on Netflix (U.S.) are Disney, and 16% of U.S. Netflix shows are owned by Disney. It will be really interesting to see how this affects Netflix, because while Disney+ will have far less content than Netflix, it also apparently will have more higher-rated content.
ReplyDelete(source: https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/disney-netflix-streaming-content-comparison-1203193967/#targetText=In%20the%20first%20year%20of,4%2C000%20titles%2C%20Ampere%20Analysis%20estimates.)