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'Hamilton' popularity lifts Disney+ engagement 20% in July: 7Park Data

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down how Disney+ & 'Hamilton' helped lift streaming usage in July, according to new data from 7Park.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: As we turn our fame and fortune segment here with a focus on the streaming space. And Disney, as we brought to you a couple weeks ago, had enjoyed quite the boost from the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical in "Hamilton." And it's still getting watched. And it could prompt some more musicals to be coming to the platform. And joining us now for more on that is Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal. And, Allie, I mean, I watched it. Pretty sure you watched it. Pretty sure most people watched it. How's it going for Disney+ on that front?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Everyone watched it. And Disney+ and "Hamilton"-- they had a really sweet July. Before I get into that data, I want to talk about the overall average household viewing minutes last month. Because according to 7Park, consumers spent about 662 minutes across a variety of streaming platforms. That is up three percentage points from the month of June, still down about 9% from those highs that we saw back in April, when coronavirus lockdown orders first went into effect. But still, pretty strong showing for July, especially since it's a hot summer month.

And one of the main reasons it did so well was due to the release of "Hamilton." "Hamilton," of course, made its grand debut on Disney+ on July 3rd. And it just continues to crush expectations. About 20% of Disney+ users tuned in to watch the film. Zack, you were one of them. I was one of them. Everyone seemed to watch this film. And it did account for 7% of overall time spent across all five major platforms. In fact, the popularity of "Hamilton" even helped boost the engagement rate of Disney+ by 20%, with users spending over 100 minutes daily on the platform. So some impressive numbers there.

But if we take another look at those top July titles, we'll see that the majority of them still come from Netflix. So I still think Netflix is the leader in this space, especially when it comes to content. But they do seem to be taking a page out of the playbook of Disney+ when it comes to musicals, because the new musical that is based on Princess Diana's life will now head exclusively to Netflix before it even makes its Broadway debut.

So this is a pretty unprecedented situation. This musical was supposed to debut on Broadway at the end of March. Obviously, that did not happen. Due to the coronavirus. Broadway has been shut down since mid-March. It will continue to remain shut down for the rest of 2020, possibly well into 2021. So this musical decided they were going to film the production. There will be no live audience. They have various health measures in place to make sure everyone remains safe. And then it's going to head to Netflix.

So I think it's going to be a very interesting experiment to see if people still go out there and purchase these Broadway tickets. Because certainly a Netflix subscription is way cheaper than a ticket to Broadway.

But overall across the entire theater industry, they are trying to offer more digital content to try and compete at a time when they're all shut down. Certainly the demand is there, especially since we've seen how well that "Hamilton" has done. So I think this might be the new wave of the future due to this pandemic.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how it does since we know "Hamilton" already had been enjoying such a rush, so much buzz around it, that people knew it by the time it came to Disney+. We'll see what happens with a relatively-- well, with an actually new musical on Netflix. But outside of that, you know, we talked last week about how I thought theaters were dead. It appears that AMC was listening-- trying to launch a new, exciting strategy to get people back into theaters here, making them historically, historically cheap, at least for one day. What's the update on that front?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Oh, yeah, they are banking on nostalgia when they re-open their doors on August 20th. And on August 20th, they will reopen about one sixth of their circuit, so that's about 100 theaters nationwide. And to commemorate that, they will be offering tickets for just $0.15 a pop. That's an ode to the original ticket price when they first opened their doors back in 1920. So really cheap, really good deal there. Only one night only.

And then following August 20th, over those next couple of weeks, they will reopen an additional 300 theaters, leading up to the release of Christopher Nolan's "Tenet." And leading up to that, they want to re-release some other classic films from the past-- like "Black Panther," "Star Wars"-- because they want to try and get people back into the theater before releasing such a big blockbuster.

Now those films will go for $5 a ticket. There will also be reduced rates when it comes to food and different snacks. So AMC really trying anything and everything that they can to bring people back to the theater. But keep in mind that this is going to be a very different theatrical experience than what people are used to. There will be various social distancing measures in place. Capacity will be capped at 50%. And everyone will be required to wear a mask.

Remember, AMC came under some heavy scrutiny after they said earlier this summer they would not require their patrons to wear a mask. They were met with swift backlash and quickly backtracked those comments. So personally, I think it's going to take people a little bit more time to feel comfortable. But AMC have been pushing this reopening as early as June or mid-July. Now, here we are over a month later. They are finally getting their wish. But we're going to have to see how things go next week, especially with all these coronavirus cases kind of seeing an uptick in certain states.

ZACK GUZMAN: And I don't know how you're going to enforce a mask mandate in a dark, dark theater. I mean, I don't know how that'll work. We'll see.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: There are gonna be a lot of masks, like, under the nose. I feel like that's gonna be--

ZACK GUZMAN: There's going to be teens-- the teens making out in the back row, too. How are they going to do that with the masks on? A lot to consider here. But, Allie Canal, appreciate you bringing us that.

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