Honey, I Shrunk the Disney Plus
The Walt Disney Company [Public domain]
Folks have started to notice that content is disappearing off of Disney Plus. Our old friend Erik Kain writing in Forbes explains why:
Pretty much all of this comes down to licensing deals and the thicket of obligations, contracts and other stumbling blocks these streaming services face in an age of stiff competition. Many deals that Disney made with services like Netflix and Starz predate Disney Plus by many years.
Even now, the only way Disney can include The Force Awakens on Disney Plus is if the company includes ads for Starz, which currently has the streaming rights for the film.
You also need to consider the fact that Disney has made big acquisitions in recent years. The purchase of 20th Century Fox comes with tons of new content like The Simpsons, but Fox had its own contracts with streaming services and those don’t just magically disappear after an acquisition.
As time passes, these deals will start to expire—though as you can see with the case of Black Panther, it may be many years until all of Disney’s various obligations are smoothed away. In the end, no doubt the House of Mouse would prefer to have every property it owns on Disney Plus. How long that will take remains to be seen.
Read the whole thing here. So, what say you?
Eh, seems like nothing to worry about. The technical issues were always going to be dwarfed by the legal issues. Sooner or later, it will sort out.Report
Netfix was like this when it first opened in New Zealand. They couldn’t show some of their own exclusives because they had sold the rights to local networks. Once those deals expired, they started showing them on their own service.Report