"Disney has tons of existing material they can just monetize"
To be clear, Disney is pulling the content from existing monetizations -- including Netflix -- to try to monetize it on their own platforms. This isn't free real estate. There is a very real cost.
And Netflix is going to put the money they aren't paying Disney to produce their own content and buy up other content.
Good point. Disney is primarily a content creation company, not a technical infrastructure company. According to other subthreads in this discussion, they treat engineers as second-class employees, requiring insane work hours for little pay. If they actually want to compete with Netflix, they have to run Disney+ as a real tech company, not as something they do on the side.
Disney+ can be a fantastic success if Disney gets it right, because they do have lots of excellent content. But if they don't take the engineering side seriously, it's going to fail.
If Disney just wanted to focus on making good movies and TV shows, which clearly is what they're best at, dealing with Netflix would have been perfect for them. If they want to be a tech company instead, they really need to follow through and commit to that.
Disney is in a tough spot since they also pay dividends. Companies typically don't ever reduce their dividends, which leaves Disney unable to spend that cash on their growth.
To be clear, Disney is pulling the content from existing monetizations -- including Netflix -- to try to monetize it on their own platforms. This isn't free real estate. There is a very real cost.
And Netflix is going to put the money they aren't paying Disney to produce their own content and buy up other content.
Disney is playing a very risky gambit here.