Sharjah24 – AFP: Disney on Wednesday said its profit slipped in the recently ended quarter but its television streaming service and parks were booming.
The entertainment giant reported net income of $470 million, just over half of the $912 million profit it made in the same period a year earlier.
But park attendance that had fallen due to the pandemic rebounded and the Disney+ television streaming service gained 7.9 million subscribers to 137.7 million.
When adding in subscriptions to Disney's streaming services Hulu and ESPN, the overall number tops 205 million.
Disney+ gained more subscribers than analysts had expected, in stark contrast to a dive in subscriber numbers reported by rival Netflix in the first quarter of this year.
A drop of just 200,000 users -- less than 0.1 percent of the total Netflix customer base -- caused shares in the Silicon Valley firm to plunge and prompted a shareholder to file a lawsuit accusing the streaming television titan of not making it clear that subscriber numbers were in peril.
About half of Disney+ subscribers are families with children, executives said on the earnings call.
Disney stopped licensing its coveted content to Netflix to make it exclusive to its own streaming service, and said it planned to stick with the tactic when it comes to rivals in the market.
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