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Disney Plus might be losing the overall streaming battle to Netflix, but it has landed a telling blow on its fierce rival with the exclusive rights for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour.
Yesterday (February 8), we reported that Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version) will exclusively stream on Disney Plus. The streaming titan will bring the concert film to people's homes on March 15, 2024, and it'll 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's emerged that, according to a new report from Puck News (and picked up by Variety), two of the world's best streaming services went head-to-head to secure streaming rights for the movie version of the pop megastar's billion-dollar-making concert. Unsurprisingly, the bidding was highly competitive, but Netflix ended up losing out to Disney's service, which gazumped its foe with a supposed $75 million offer.
Disney Plus is also believed to have faced competition from Universal Pictures, the studio that handled 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 live concert movie's rumored price when approached by Variety.
A streaming 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 any of the eight most notable streamers to land the exclusive rights to her most recent money-spilling live tour is one not to be passed up.
Disney, then, will be delighted to secure the rights to beam The Eras Tour on TVs worldwide, especially at Netflix's expense. Despite being the home to franchise heavy hitters in Marvel and Star Wars, Disney Plus has struggled to rein in its biggest rival on the streaming landscape. Indeed, Disney Plus just revealed it lost one million users between September 2023 and December 2023. Meanwhile, Netflix recently announced it had surpassed 260 million subscribers – a figure more than double the size of Disney Plus' subscriber list.
Considering 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 userbase, but snatching The Eras Tour from under its competitor's nose – even to the tune of $75 million – is undoubtedly a fillip for CEO Bob Iger and his fellow executives. Get ready to become the latest Swiftie, then, when The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version) lands on the service – and, most likely, our best Disney Plus movies list.
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