As Disney aims to build up its empire, CFO Hugh Johnston said he views the company’s main streaming platform as its greatest asset.“I actually view Disney+ as the most strategic asset that we have in the company right now,” Johnston said.Speaking at the UBS Conference in New York on Monday, Johnson highlighted the 175 million subscribers across Disney+ and Hulu and the options the streaming platform gives to Disney in terms of marketing and consumer targeting.Bringing Hulu content and now, an ESPN tile, onto Disney+, also means the streaming platform has the possibility to be the “portal” into “all things Disney,” he added as well as a “go-to entertainment asset.” The ESPN tile in particular is meant to be “an objector to churn” for Disney+.“What you really need in the household is one objector, somebody to say, ‘No, no, we can’t turn it off,” he said, listing a viewer who may stay for general entertainment, kids movies, or now sports and news.The tile is also meant to get consumers used to the idea of finding ESPN on Disney+. However, Johnston added that the ESPN flagship product, which is meant to launch in early fall 2025, will be a much different product than the tile and will include ESPN betting, fantasy tracking and e-commerce connected to sports, rather than just sports content.Asked about the recent creative success of the studio, with films such as Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, and streaming shows such as Shogun, Johnston said it dates back to the changes Bob Iger made when he returned as CEO around creative output.“There’s a limited number of human beings who can do this stuff, and when they push them to go faster to create more content for the streaming service, candidly, quality suffered, and you could see it, and consumers could see it, and you saw it in the box office, and you saw it in terms of the TV ratings as well,” Johnston said. “When Bob came back, one of the things he realized very quickly is we need to raise the bar on quality, and one of the ways we’re going to do that is we’re going to slow down a bit on quantity.”Disney recently disclosed that it plans to spend $24 billion on content next year. Asked how to think about Disney’s content spend moving forward, Johnston said that $24 billion is “a good number,” but that it may escalate slightly over the next few years in international streaming, as Disney potentially looks to create some local programming.The other large asset Disney has is its theme parks and cruise lines. The planned $60 billion investment over the next ten years will result in new lands and attractions across all parks, which should, in turn, increase attendance and lead to higher pricing. Johnston noted that Disney has to be cautious about price increases at its parks as the goal is to get consumers to repeatedly visit. The price increases typically happen on the premium end and on added services, such as Lightning Lanes to skip lines.While parks attendance took a hit over the summer, and has had recent interruptions with two hurricanes around Walt Disney World, Johnston said consumer confidence appears to have bounced back. Disney has already built in a guidance for a possible hit to attendance with the opening of Universal’s Epic Universe in May 2025. But Johnson said early bookings for next summer at Disney are up year-over-year and that historically new parks in the Orlando area lead to greater attendance at all.“Right now, the consumer seems to be doing fine. So from that perspective, we’re quite confident, and we’ve got good visibility in terms of the guide, in terms of Epic, we actually have built some negative in for that. Whether it will be as significant as we built into it remains to be seen. But we were pretty cautious and conservative on that,” he said.
© 2024 The Hollywood Reporter.