Disney+ won’t be launching in France on March 24th at the request of the French government, the company has shared. Instead the streaming service will launch in France on April 7th. As of now, Disney+ will still launch in the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy on March 24th.
Encore un peu de patience pour nos fans français, notre service de streaming Disney+ arrive bientôt… mais à la demande du @GouvernementFR, nous avons convenu de reporter le lancement jusqu’au mardi 7 avril 2020. #DisneyPlus
— Disney+ FR (@DisneyPlusFR) March 21, 2020
The reason for the delay is to help preserve bandwidth with more workers conducting business remotely putting a strain on the country’s bandwidth. When it does launch, like other streaming services, they will reduce the bandwidth by 25%, even in the countries that are launching on March 24th.
In a statement, Kevin Mayer, Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer & International at the Walt Disney Company said, “In anticipation of high consumer demand for Disney+, we are proactively instituting measures to lower our overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25% in all of the markets launching Disney+ on March 24th.”
He continued: “To our French fans, the Disney+ service is coming, but at the request of the French government, we have agreed to postpone the launch until Tuesday, 7 April 2020.”
The Disney+ launch was also delayed in India. It was supposed to launch as part of “Disney+ Hotstar” on March 29th to coincide with the start of the IPL season. But given the delay in the season, it has been postponed to a later date.