Seemingly a late mover, success can be traced back 15 years ago to a $100bn strategy to overhaul empire
It might have taken the Walt Disney company less than three years to overtake Netflix in streaming subscribers, but its road to domination started more than 15 years ago with a carefully planned $100bn (£81bn) strategy to reinvigorate its empire for 21st century viewers.
The combination of Netflix priming a global audience for the streaming era and the serendipitous launch of Disney+ at the start of the pandemic, a service populated with crown jewel franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel, transformed what had been viewed as Disney’s late mover disadvantage into unprecedented breakneck growth.
