The reason for the merger has to do with turning around an increasingly frequent and unpleasant trend in the streaming business: the diversification of services that makes users have to jump from one platform to another to access a content of your interest.
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In the case of Disney, the company made its streaming debut in Latin America in August 2020 with an app focused only on family content that it called Disney Plus. To also have an impact on a more adult market, shortly after that it launched Star Plus. But in these years of presence in the region, they noticed that the plan that worked best for them was the one that offered both services in one. “The Combo Plus, which offered the possibility of contracting both applications under the same plan, was the most successful plan of all, and this was a great determinant for the strategy that we are implementing now,” Natalia Scalia, General Manager of Direct-to-Consumer from The Walt Disney in Latin America, in a virtual round table with South American journalists in which Skip Intro from “El Comercio” participated.
Natalia Scalia is General Manager of Direct-to-Consumer at The Walt Disney in Latin America. (Photo: Disney)
The press conference took place hours before the merger begins to take effect and to reveal the changes that users can now see: Disney+ now has titles as diverse as “Inside Out” and “Chucky” as well as a Violetta concert and a UFC fight. What other changes does this integration of platforms imply and what will be its main benefits? We will tell you about them below.
Starting this June 26, the Disney+ application will have an update. Some users will be updated automatically, others will have to initiate the update. “This will depend on how each of their devices is configured, but, in general, it is an automatic update,” the executive explained.
FX’s “The Bear” can be seen on Disney+.
Star+ content has already migrated to Disney+.
The access credentials, that is, the username and password, will be exactly the same, whether you signed up for Disney+, Star+ or the combo. An important point is that although Star+ officially says goodbye this June 26, it will continue to be active until July 24 to give its users a “chance” to find out about the update.
“For a while we are going to keep access to Star Plus available for those users who are just understanding how this transition works and who come to Star+ as they do regularly have the chance to receive the explanation, understand that they have to go to Disney+ and moving to the new experience, which today is 100% Disney+ as a product,” details Scalia.
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Will rates go up or will prices stay the same?
Until before the merger, the service rates were presented in three plans: a subscription only to Star+ had a cost of 44.90 soles per month, contracting only Disney+ had a price of 27.90 soles per month and the Disney combo and Star a total of 49.90 soles per month. Starting this June 26, new users will have the option of two plans:
| Disney+ plans | Features | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Disney+ Standard | Complete Disney+ catalog (no ads) Star movies and series (no ads) Access to linear sports channels ESPN and ESPN3 (with ads) Audio up to 5.1. Video up to 1080 px Full HD** Simultaneous playback on two devices Downloads on up to ten devices (up to 25 titles total) | Monthly: 38.90 soles per month. Annual: 326.90 soles per month. |
| Disney+ Premium | Complete Disney+ catalog (no ads) Star movies and series (without ads Complete ESPN sports catalog, including all linear channels and exclusive events (with ads) Audio up to Dolby Atmos Video up to 4K UHD and HDR** Simultaneous playback on four devices Downloads on up to ten devices (up to 25 titles total) | Monthly: 55.90 soles per month. Annual: 469.90 soles per month. |
In the case of those who already had a membership, be it Disney+, Star+ or the combo, everyone will go to the Disney+ Premium plan automatically, but their rate will not be like that of new users. At least not, at the beginning of the migration.
“Regarding the price that already subscribed users will pay, we will communicate that to each of them, since they will have special treatment for being existing subscribers. The price that we will give you is not the same price that is published in the proposals, you will have preferential treatment to transition with us at this time and it is specific by market and specific by type of subscriber, but everyone will access the highest offer that we offer. “It is Disney+ Premium,” the executive reported.
It should be noted that in some countries, including Peru, there will be a plan with advertisements to have a more affordable price, but no details have been given as to whether it is planned to be implemented in other areas in the short term. “There is a plan called Disney Standard with ads, it is being distributed through some partners such as Mercado Libre and it is coming out in a set of specific limited markets: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile and for now that is the plan ”Scalia detailed.
Upon entering Disney+, the user will find a navigation bar very similar to the classic one: a ‘slider’ with several featured titles and a cutter that highlights the main offer on the grid, to which will be added a section called Star, which will include titles from Searchlight, 20th Century Studios and FX, as well as original productions created entirely in Latin America, and an ESPN tab. Featured content from Disney Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic will remain.
New Disney+ menu with Star and ESPN.
The live sports proposal that ESPN adds is a very important added value for the company in the face of this merger. These are about 700 live events per month that will be added to this catalog.
“Star+ gave us a much more precise temperature of the relevance of live content within the streaming universe. We are very used to talking about on-demand content, but when we go to the universe of content that has value at a specific moment and generates that appointment with subscribers, as happens with sport, much more is learned from that behavior. The combination of these two universes is extremely powerful, that is where we believe that we have a very big differential with this proposal, which is also now a single proposal that has absolutely all of the company’s content in one place,” commented Scalia.
“Our commitment is absolute to the peace of mind of each home, we want on the one hand to provide the best content proposal and facilitate the experience of our users and on the other hand to maintain that peace of mind that each profile is exposed to the content that is appropriate for them” , says the Disney executive and, in that sense, details the new alternatives for filtering content according to profiles and their ages.
Disney+ parental control alternatives.
“In this new proposal, what we are doing is expanding the parental control ‘features’ that we have in the application. All accounts have the ability to define profiles. Within this definition of profiles you can select, according to the rating that each of the contents has, what rating they can access according to age. For live content, which does not have that rating, you can also select the ability to turn it on or off for a given profile. “This gives a lot of flexibility so that the account owner who configures the profiles within the home can decide with a fairly high level of detail what content that profile can see,” explained Scalia.
The new Disney+ will maintain another of its well-known parental control options: “Junior Mode”, which requires activating an on or off key for a profile. “It is designed for preschool children, what this profile does is directly configure the entire experience with content suitable for all audiences and also proposes a much more visual and much more intuitive application navigation proposal for young children,” he comments. Scalia.
Finally, the service will add access by pin, through which a user with a profile with certain restrictions will not be able to edit their profile if they do not have a security PIN that allows them to do so.
In the midst of these changes, the company assures that producing original content in the region will continue to be an important part of its strategy and that they already have the details ready for the launch of the Argentine “The Manager 3″, the Brazilian “Impuros” and the Mexican “The Chavez”.
Guillermo Francella in “The Manager”.
Currently, Disney+ is the second favorite platform for Peruvians, according to a survey by Sherlock Communications. Although, at the moment, the company does not want to give official figures or make projections for the end of the year, in the last streaming report that was made, Disney had an average of 203.8 million subscribers globally. “The Latin American region is part of that number, but unfortunately we cannot give specific numbers for our region. What we can say is that we are really very happy with what we have achieved to date and very confident in the success that we are going to have in the future with this renewed, expanded product with the intention of being a first option for the home. bring together absolutely all these pillars of content in a single application,” concluded Scalia.
