Disney Plus available to Irish subscribers the week after St Patrick’s Day

Irish customers will be able to sign up for Disney's new streaming service, Disney Plus, in just over two months, the entertainment giant has announced. It will cost €6.99 per month or €69.99 for a whole year.

The service will vie with rivals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime for subscribers, and will launch in several countries across Europe, including Ireland, on March 24th.The Walt Disney Company has effectively brought forward the European rollout of the new service by a week, as it was previously expected to launch on March 31st.

Disney Plus will initially be available only in Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. Other European countries, including the Nordics, Belgium and Portugal, will be added to the rollout in the summer.

Disney Plus will give subscribers direct access to the company’s catalogue of films and television shows, including The Mandalorian, a US smash hit featuring the Baby Yoda character.

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Netflix

The service will also include content from other Disney-associated brands, such as Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic.

Disney Plus enters the Irish market at lower price point than its rival Netflix, packages for which start at €7.99 per month for the most basic offering. The cost of a Netflix subscription rises to €11.99 monthly for a standard plan, and €15.99 for its premium package, which allows users to stream on four devices simultaneously.

Netflix doesn’t break out the number of Irish subscribers to its service, but the company has previously suggested that more than 500,000 Irish households have “access” to its service. Most subscriptions allow access from multiple locations, however, so the true number of actual accounts is below this amount. Disney’s new offering is expected to pose a serious competitive threat to Netflix.

Apple TV Plus launched in Ireland in November, and is significantly cheaper, with packages beginning at €4.99 monthly. Apple is estimated be investing $6 billion (€5.4 billion) on the acquisition of content for its service.

Disney Plus has been a huge hit in the US since its launch there late last year. It reached 10 million sign-ups on its first day, and was downloaded nearly 41 million times on mobile devices since its rollout in November, according to a report by research firm Sensor Tower last week.

The service features roughly 500 movies and 7,500 TV episodes from the company’s family entertainment catalogue as well as new programming. Disney’s other streaming services include Hulu, which has 26.8 million subscribers, and ESPN+, which serves 3.5 million.

– (Additional reporting: Reuters)