Last year, the Australian streaming service, Stan, announced a deal with Disney to bring its huge library to it platform and this week, the company that owns Stan, Nine, announced that it now has 1.5 million subscribers.

When this deal was announced, it was unclear how this could effect the upcoming Disney+ service in Australia.  Since no details on how long the deal between Stan and Disney was for.

Nine’s CEO Hugh Marks was asked by the Mumbrella about the Disney deal:

“We haven’t announced the term of the Disney deal to the market and wouldn’t, because that’s confidential obviously to us. But what we’ve been saying is the value that is being created, is the value in the brand that is Stan. Stan has multiple supplier relationships, and might have different relationships in the future. We certainly hope that Disney will be a long term part of Stan, but Stan will succeed based on its own branding over any other.”

He was then asked about whether a business like Disney would acquire a stake in Stan:

“Stan as a business will have a bunch of people interested in how they might get involved in that business in a broader way.

There’s a whole range of potential ways you could explore that, and I certainly think it’s a business that will get that focus, including from people like overseas content suppliers, so it will be interesting to see how it does shape up over the next three to five years.”

Disney are planning on taking Disney+ global and will no doubt want its content available in Australia, but with no clear idea of how long the deal with Stan is for, it does look more like a stop gap to keep its content available in the short term, while it waits to launch Disney+.

Disney+ is launching in late 2019 in the US and will follow shortly afterwards in Europe, but no clear information on an Australian launch has yet been announced, other than the official Australia website redirecting to the same “Keep Me Updated” website that the rest of the world sees.

Are you hoping Disney+ comes to Australia?

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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