
Disney Plus has overtaken Netflix with its number of streaming subscribers, after announcing it will launch an option with advertising later this year.
The most recent quarter has seen 14.4million streaming subscribers join, pushing the total to 221million.
According to FactSet polls, the 14.4million beats the 10million expected, after Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi and Marvel’s Ms Marvel was released.
Meanwhile, Netflix has reached 220.7million subscribers, having announced a loss of another 1million.
The streaming giant is facing a tough fight as more people quit their subscriptions between April and July this year, although, the loss was not as bad as Netflix had predicted.
When asked what may have stopped subscriptions dropping even more, Netflix’s chief executive Reed Hastings admitted: ‘If there was a single thing, we might say Stranger Things.’

He added: ‘But again we’re talking about you know losing 1million instead of losing 2million so you know our excitement is tempered by the less less bad results,’ after praising ‘lots of titles, lots of viewing’ including programmes like Ozark.
The company had predicted a loss of 2million subscribers, after reporting its first quarterly decline in more than a decade earlier this year of almost 200,000.

Suspending service in Russia after the Ukraine invasion also cost Netflix 700,000 members.
Meanwhile, as Netflix plans on launching a cheaper plan with ads, so does Disney Plus.

The company announced that the new option with ads will cost the same as Disney Plus subscriptions now, without ads, for $7.99 a month.
For viewers wanting no ads, the subscription will rise to $10.99 in December.
‘We had an excellent quarter, with our world-class creative and business teams powering outstanding performance at our domestic theme parks, big increases in live-sports viewership, and significant subscriber growth at our streaming services,’ chief executive officer at Disney, Bob Chapek said.