Disney Plus may be losing the overall streaming battle to Netflix, but it has dealt its fierce rival a major blow with the exclusive rights to Taylor Swift’s The Eras tour.
Yesterday (February 8) we reported that Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour (Taylor’s version) is streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. The streaming titan will bring the concert film into people’s homes on March 15, 2024, and will include bonus content in the form of five songs that Swifties didn’t see when the film was initially released on paid video-on-demand (PVOD) services in late 2023.
Now it has emerged that, according to a new report from Puck news (and collected by Variety), two of the world’s top streaming services battled it out to secure the streaming rights to the film version of the pop megastar’s billion-dollar concert. Unsurprisingly, the bidding was highly competitive, but Netflix ultimately lost out to Disney’s service, which faced its foe with a purported $75 million bid.
It is believed that Disney Plus has also faced competition from Universal Pictures, the studio that produced the film The Eras tour‘s PVOD distribution on platforms such as Prime Video and Google Play. Disney and Swift’s representatives declined to comment on the rumored price of the live concert film when contacted by Variety.
A flowing victory after a tough period
Taylor Swift is one of the world’s most popular and successful music artists of the 21st century. So the opportunity for one of the eight most notable streamers to snag exclusive rights to her latest money-grubbing live tour is not to be missed.
Disney will be happy to secure the rights to beam The Eras tour on TVs around the world, especially at the expense of Netflix. Despite being home to franchise hits in Marvel and Star Wars, Disney Plus has struggled to rein in its biggest rival in the streaming landscape. Disney Plus just revealed that it lost one million users between September 2023 and December 2023. Meanwhile, Netflix recently announced that it has surpassed 260 million subscribers – a figure that is more than double Disney Plus’ subscriber list.
Given the above, any streaming triumph, no matter how big or small, is something worth celebrating for Disney. It may be languishing in Netflix’s wake when it comes to the size of its user base, but it’s stepping up The Eras tour from under the nose of the competitor – even at a cost of $75 million – is undoubtedly a boost for CEO Bob Iger and his fellow executives. Get ready to become the newest Swiftie, and when The Eras Tour (Taylor’s version) ends up on the service – and most likely on our list of the best Disney Plus movies.