Any tech people here? How much does it cost to run a site like Disney+?

[hrvoje]

It's been widely reported that Disney is spending about $30 billion per year on Disney+. It's also widely reported that fixing Disney+ is a priority for Iger now that he's back.

I'm curious how much it costs to run a site like Disney + (vs creating content).

 

[Narcoossee11]

Disney is cheap. So if they are spending 30b, they should spend $60b.

 

[fatmanatee]

I’m curious about this and I don’t know if we can get an exact answer but I looked something up for Netflix and they were paying AWS 1 bil per year in 2020 just for cloud computing costs. I’m guessing that’s increased since then. It’s one component but an indication that this stuff costs an insane amount of money.

BTW for all the jokes about Disney tech I don’t think they’ve skimped on this. The app is solid and the streams are well produced, particularly for a company that got into this much later than Netflix. They can get away with screwing up tech in park ops but they needed to nail it with streaming to take market share from Netflix.

 

[LYSE]

A lot more than most people realize, as mentioned the computing/internet resource requirements alone are exceptionally high.

 

[AaronB]

Doubtful you can get an exact number, but I believe Disney is using 3rd party CDNs, and those deals would have very high costs worldwide. Then you would have all the money they would be investing to produce original content. I would think those would be the 2 biggest costs for Disney+. Then there would be some other costs for things like the front end for the website/apps, and development charges (maybe hosted on something like AWS or Azure), but those costs would be tiny compared to the charge for the CDN and creating content.

I read some articles early on that Disney may build their own CDN eventually, and if they really are doing that, it would be an enormous investment on top of the costs of how Disney+ is running now.

 

[starlite_]

You can always look for their annual reports, most companies have this info posted publically.

 

[MarkleB]

According to their quarterly earnings report ending July 2, the entire Direct-to-Consumer branch (which includes Hulu and ESPN+ in addition to Disney+) had operating costs of $4.5 billion, with $1.4 billion of that being programming and production costs for Disney+, or $3.8 billion for the entire division. So multiply by 4 for estimates. (https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1744489/000174448922000161/dis-20220702.htm)

Edited to add that a note under the DTC section notes that "other operating expenses" were impacted by higher distribution and technology costs, indicating that the cloud portion (storage and CDN) of DTC is included in the $822 million of Other Operating Expenses.

 

[The Jackal]

It's been widely reported that Disney is spending about $30 billion per year on Disney+. It's also widely reported that fixing Disney+ is a priority for Iger now that he's back.

I'm curious how much it costs to run a site like Disney + (vs creating content).

From what I have heard. The 30 billion is to make new content for the Disney+ for the year. I don’t know what the cost to run it would be. They advertise a lot. I’m guessing it’s not cheap to run.

 

[Upatnoon]

It's been widely reported that Disney is spending about $30 billion per year on Disney+. It's also widely reported that fixing Disney+ is a priority for Iger now that he's back.

I'm curious how much it costs to run a site like Disney + (vs creating content).

When you see such a big figure, it makes me wonder.

If Disney+ runs ads on ESPN and ABC, does that get added to their spending even if those other channels are owned by Disney?

How are they accounting for the content on Disney+? Is Disney+ paying Walt Disney Studios for the rights and production costs?

The losses at Disney+ could be made to look large, even if the reality is they are making money. Hollywood is well-known for making its business look like it is a money-loser even when they actually making millions. Disney+ is another layer in the accounting game.

While there are many news stories out there about Disney+ losing money, I have not seen anything that really explains why.