Baby Yoda Comes to Disney+ Rescue as Anniversary Approaches
After a great first year, the streaming service needs to convert viewers to paying subscribers, as Covid-19 clobbers Disney’s other businesses.
Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian.
Source: Disney/Lucasfilm
When then-Walt Disney Co. executive Kevin Mayer sat down with Hans Vestberg, the soon-to-be chief executive officer of Verizon Communications Inc., at the 2018 Sun Valley conference in the Idaho mountains, it was supposed to be a get-to-know-you chat. The annual conclave of media and tech heavy hitters is known as a place where deals are hatched—and this meeting didn’t disappoint.
Mayer was plotting the launch of Disney+, the company’s big effort to compete with Netflix Inc. in the business of online video. Their talk set the stage for Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, to provide the service free of charge for one year to many of its mobile phone and internet customers. The offer gave the streaming service a boost when it premiered in November 2019, with Disney reporting more than 26 million subscriptions in the first two months, 20% of them from Verizon.