The launch of Star means a lot of new content for Disney Plus – but not in the US.

Today is the launch of Star. It’s a new section of Disney Plus for an international audience that will feature more R-rated adult movies, FX TV shows, and other shows and movies that Disney owns the rights to, but don’t fit Disney’s family-friendly image. Plus.

Star is basically Disney’s solution to the fact that Hulu doesn’t exist in international markets. It marks a way for the company to expand Disney Plus’ value proposition for international customers with the most critical currency a streaming service has to offer: a larger library of content.

What that means is that international users are about to get a massive influx of movies and shows available on Disney Plus, through Star, that won’t be available to US customers – or rather, won’t be available to US customers. customers through Disney Plus. . Those shows and movies will instead continue to live on Hulu as part of the separate service.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

If you are an international Disney Plus customer living in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand or Canada – the regions that will be accessing Star starting today – that’s great news.

Conversely, if you are a US customer you may feel a little cheated. The library that Disney offers on Star includes TV shows such as Family Dude How I met your mother Lost Firefly Grey’s Anatomy Desperate housewives Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bones along with movies like Deadpool 2 Kingsman: The Secret Service Borat, and Brave heart – Movies and shows to which Disney already owns the rights, but which require customers to pay for an additional Hulu subscription to watch in the US.

This is due to a complex matrix of rights deals and income streams. While Star and Hulu will have quite a bit of overlap, including Hulu originals such as Love, Victor – Hulu in the US still has a much larger library, including licensed shows and movies from third-party studios such as MGM and Paramount.

Star, on the other hand, will only feature first-party content that Disney has the rights to from its own studios (including ABC, Hulu, FX, Freeform, 20th Television, 20th Century Studios and Touchstone Pictures). It appears Disney’s balance sheet has concluded that subscribers are willing to pay for the separate Hulu and Disney Plus libraries in the US, but the more limited Star lineup was enough to make one in its own right. justify standing paid purchase for international customers.

Part of that distinction also comes down to the Angry God or ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) – something Disney thinks a lot about as it strives to build Disney Plus around the world. Looking at Disney’s 2020 revenues, the company’s direct-to-consumer streaming business grew 73 percent year over year, with revenues of $ 3.5 billion. But it is actually made less Each customer’s average money, with an ARPU dropped to $ 4.03 per subscriber, largely due to the significantly lower cost of Disney Plus Hotstar in India and Indonesia.

(Incidentally, Star should not be confused with Disney Plus Hotstar, which operates under the Disney Plus banner and shows Disney’s original shows and movies, but is a very different service in terms of price and distribution than Disney Plus / Hulu in the US and Disney Plus / Star in other international markets.)

Changing Star to a cheaper international version of Hulu doesn’t help fix that ARPU problem. But using Hulu content to boost Disney Plus subscribers in the more lucrative (per customer) markets of Europe, Australia and Canada does.

That is mostly true if you take into account that Disney is also using the Star rollout to increase prices in those markets from $ 6.99 per month to $ 8.99, which is a proportionately larger increase than the $ 1 price increase (of $ 6.99 to $ 7.99) scheduled for Disney Plus users in the US later this year.

And using that big pile of Star content to sweeten the pot is the perfect answer for Disney, as it owns all the rights to everything. Unlike Hulu, which costs Disney a ton in licensing fees and ad revenue deals, adding Star to Disney Plus internationally doesn’t cost a dime. It just better make money from things the company already owns.

That’s even reflected in the branding itself: last year, CEO Bob Chapek announced that it would use the Star brand internationally instead of Hulu, citing the fact that Hulu has both the association with aggregated content and the lack of brand awareness outside The United States.

In fact, Star’s existence could be a glimpse into a possible future for Disney’s streaming efforts in the US should Hulu eventually become unsustainable as stakeholders continue to reclaim their licensed shows and movies for their own streaming services like Peacock, Paramount Plus or HBO Max.

However, if Disney plans to offer a single unified streaming service in the US, it’s still a long way off. For now, US customers will have to pay for the Disney bundle (which includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus) if they want to stream FX shows and WandaVision

But whether you live in the US with Hulu, or Canada with Star, there is one big winner in all of this: Disney’s bottom line.