Who could Disney+ make content sharing deal with in the US?
Who could Disney+ make content sharing deal with in the US?
Disney+ has struck a unique content-swap deal with the British streamer ITVX. Who would make a good partner for it here in the US?
There’s one thing that giant entertainment companies don’t do all that well: share. Just take a look at the ongoing legal scrap between Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery over “South Park” for evidence; companies are desperate for intellectual property that will keep their customers watching their channels and streaming services, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for cooperation. Across the pond, however, the spirit of collaboration appears to be growing, as evidenced by a new deal between Disney and the British TV channel ITV to share streaming content. That agreement prompted The Streamable to wonder which services could make good partners for Disney+ here in the United States.
Key Details:
- What’s mine is yours: Disney will share streaming content with the service ITVX in Britain.
- Seeking presige: Partnerships with prestige TV services like Apple TV+ or HBO Max would make sense.
- Sports sharing too?: Sharing content between ESPN’s new streamer and a service like Fox One would be much more difficult to pull off.
On Thursday, Variety reported the details of a new deal between Disney and the British TV channel ITV, which operates the ITVX streaming service. Disney+ will get a “promotional selection” of titles from ITV, such as “Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office,” “Spy Amongst Friends,” and even select seasons of the reality series “Love Island,” while ITVX will get shows like “Andor” and “The Bear” in return.
Licensing deals that see one company pay another for temporary access to a title in their library happen all the time, but this is a different story. Around 70 to 100 hours of content from each streamer’s library will be shared — not licensed — to the other, and each hopes to attract an audience that normally wouldn’t be interested in the traditional brand of content on their platforms.
“It’s really powerful for us and will help drive consideration in a demo which hasn’t considered as much under our sign ups,” Disney GM of EMEA Karl Holmes told Variety. “And at the same time, we get some of the U.K.’s biggest shows to put in front of our younger audience. And it does the same for ITV in reverse. It all works is because of the complementarity of the audiences.”
If that’s the goal, there are plenty of streaming services that Disney+ could partner with in a content-sharing agreement in the United States that could satisfy it as well. The first content segment that comes to mind, which would serve as a complementary option for Disney+’s programming, is prestige TV, which would slot in well alongside Disney+’s library of shows and movies for younger audiences.
Apple TV+ and HBO Max are the best examples of streamers packed with prestige TV. HBO Max is the likelier of these two candidates; after all, Warner Bros. Discovery already partners with Disney on the Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max bundle, and a cross-streamer content sharing arrangement would be the next logical step in that regard. But Apple TV+ brings a lot of intrigue in such a partnership; imagine how well the feel-good series “Ted Lasso” would do were it to appear on Disney+ alongside the “Mighty Ducks” franchise.
I also think there are opportunities for Disney+ at the other end of the TV spectrum. Consider Paramount+; it might seem on its face that Disney+ and Paramount+ share a focus on franchises as well as myriad other genres, which would lead to the conclusion that their audiences aren’t all that complementary. But digging a little deeper, I don’t think Disney+ has anything like the Taylor Sheridan titles that are available on Disney+, or shows like “Tracker” and “NCIS” that have broad appeal in parts of the country.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that Disney will be able to find a way to share its sports content with other streaming providers quite as easily. It would be a boon for audiences if it could; the new ESPN streaming service being able to share “Monday Night Football” with the forthcoming Fox One service in exchange for a selection of Fox’s college football games would be a delight to fans come the fall.
Unfortunately, since both these companies purchase sports rights from the leagues they belong to, they’d have to get buy-in from those leagues on any content sharing. That would likely involve an increased fee to watch shared content at the very least, and the legal hurdles involved in sharing sports rights back and forth would probably be prohibitive enough to put the kibosh on the idea from the get-go.
On-demand entertainment is another matter, and I think there are plenty of opportunities for Disney to craft deals similar to its ITV agreement domestically. The question now becomes whether any other media outlets would play ball with the House of Mouse, or if competition stateside is too fierce for any streamers to consider entering into such an agreement.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”