Disney to launch UK streaming service


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Editor

| 22 October 2015





The House of Mouse is to make a substantial play in the UK with a subscription streaming video service.


The new service, to be known as DisneyLife, will not just offer films, cartoons, TV shows and other video content but also books and music that it owns. Significantly the new service will not include Disney-owned films produced by Marvel or the Lucasfilm Star Wars titles.

The move will make Disney the largest company ever to stream content on a direct to consumer basis. Once a beachhead has been formed in the UK, Disney will expand the service in continental Europe with France, Spain, Italy and Germany likely to be added in 2016.

Talking to the Financial Times about the launch, Disney CEO Bob Iger said: "[DisneyLife] is the future, in many respects ... We're seeing more and more opportunities to reach consumers directly and not through middlemen, and we're seeing consumers wanting product in different ways."

Intriguingly, and perhaps nodding to potential competitive difficulties with local satellite and cable companies, there are no plans to launch DisneyLife in the US. However Iger revealed to the FT that he did not totally rule out such a launch, asserting that the service's technology platform was scalable not only to the US but also to their brands.