Disney recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of the launch of Disney+, and over the last five years, we’ve seen the streaming platform slowly evolve over time with the addition of new hubs for Hulu, Star and ESPN, along with many changes in stragety about its original programming, the addition of an ad-supported tier, live channels and much more.

The streaming service is set to undergo even more changes later this year due to the launch of the full direct-to-consumer version of ESPN via Disney+. Over the past year, we’ve heard Disney CEO Bob Iger talk about other technological developments they want to make on the platform to improve it.

During a recent question-and-answer session at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Dana Walden was asked to describe Disney’s strategy towards its technology for streaming.

You’re absolutely right. I would say, though, that Disney is a great technology company and a great storytelling company. You think about Josh’s team and the Imagineers and how they bring the magic of these stories to life at our Parks with technology in our Pixar films. How do we make our productions both efficient and more dazzling through technology.

The acquisition of BAMTech, our advertising technology, we have moved forward significantly throughout time embracing technology as a vital tool to deliver these stories. Again, Disney+, very young, built on a platform that was ultimately supposed to serve high-quality video at scale and manage fundamental relationships with customers around onboarding and billing.

And you see how far we’ve come in a very short period, a lot thanks to Hulu and how the technology was advanced there, but now having Hulu on Disney+, I will just point again, we’ve made key hires in our technology area. Our Head of Technology, Adam Smith, who came from a long career at YouTube, and then a new Head of Engineering, Andre Rohe, who again came from decades at YouTube, and Meta focused on algorithmic programming and personalization, deploying AI across all of our services.

But you look at great technologists like that and say, okay, why would you leave a technology company to come to The Walt Disney Company? And it’s very simple to work on the very best stories, characters, and have an extraordinary opportunity to keep driving that combination of the two towards all, again, all of those touch points.

It’s been very obvious that Disney knows it’s behind the curve in making Disney+ a better experience than Netflix since, in many ways, the app hasn’t changed much in terms of the front page since it was initially launched, especially in some countries.  

While Disney has been making many tweaks, it’s still not near the same level as Netflix or YouTube, which outperform Disney. 

Dana was asked about their top priority for Disney streaming in 2025, to which she replied:

Absolutely. It is a top priority and we keep releasing new features, streams, as you just talked about. When Flagship launches, and again, through having content for subscribers on Disney+ to engage with, we’ll have the opportunity to entice and convince subscribers to upgrade into the trio that will then include Flagship. And we think that will truly unlock the power of this portfolio of content across every genre. And that’s all going to be enabled through technology.

Roger’s Take: The addition of ESPN Flagship will no doubt help bring together all of Disney’s services into one platform.  But, multiple platforms have been the biggest problem for Disney, as they’ve got so many different apps available, with Hulu, ESPN+, Disney+, along with other slight variations of Disney+ in some countries across the Middle East. 

With a single focus on making Disney+ the main hub, hopefully, at some point in the future, they can finally merge their apps together, offering a simple one-stop app that will allow them to continue to develop new features without being distracted by multiple different apps. It’s why YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix apps are getting better because each company is only focused on a single app, and so resources aren’t being split in multiple ways.

What changes would you like to see made to Disney+?  Let me know on social media!

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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