Many may believe major streaming services such as Disney Plus and Netflix would be at each other’s throats constantly in the race to get more subscribers, but it turns out the opposite is the case.

Recently, Netflix revealed they managed to land over 203 million subscribers during their Q4 2020 earnings report. This means 8.51 million subscribers were added during that quarter, with a total of 37 million opting for a paid subscription over the course of 2020.

Meanwhile, Disney revealed during their own earnings call that they had managed to obtain a total of 86.8 million subscribers – a figure which some may have presumed would lead to Netflix worrying about the pace at which their competitor is catching up to them.

However, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings commented on Disney’s subscriber growth by saying: ‘It’s super impressive what Disney has done. I mean it’s the incredible execution for an incumbent to pivot and take on an insurgent…

‘It shows that members are interested and willing to pay more for more content because they’re hungry for great stories, and Disney does have some great stories.

‘And so it gets us fired up about increasing our membership, increasing our content budget.’

What’s more, it looks like Hastings is keen to engage in some friendly competition with Disney when it comes to his competitor’s main strength of animated titles: ‘It’s going to be great for the world that Disney and Netflix are competing show by show, movie by movie.

‘And we’re very fired up about catching them in family animation, maybe eventually passing them, we’ll see, a long way to go just to catch them, and maintaining our lead in general entertainment that’s so stimulating like Bridgerton, which I don’t think you’re going to see on Disney anytime soon.’