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Todd Spangler
NY Digital Editor
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Courtesy of Disney Fresh-in-the-saddle Disney boss Josh D’Amaro is pushing forward on an initiative already underway to make Disney+ the primary touchpoint for Mouse House customers and fans worldwide.
“Disney+ becomes the primary relationship between Disney and its fans, the place where everything comes together,” D’Amaro said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday.
D’Amaro, who ran Disney’s parks division before stepping into the CEO role in March, said that the company’s parks are “essentially the physical centerpiece of the company. And similarly, we’re building Disney+ to serve as the immersive, interactive digital centerpiece of the company. And in the long term, what you’ll see is those pieces of the company become increasingly connected.”
He said that “Disney has the world’s most passionate and loyal fans.” However, D’Amaro noted, there are “millions” of Disney+ subscribers who don’t regularly visit the company’s theme parks.
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“I think we have a real opportunity to deepen our direct relationships with our fans, and we can do this by creating a much more connected Disney experience. And we’ll do that across streaming and sports and games and experiences, and we’ll put Disney+ right at the middle, playing an increasingly central role,” D’Amaro said. He added, “It’ll be a more connected fan experience, and we’ll use technology as an accelerant.”
D’Amaro said boosting engagement “is critical to reducing churn” on Disney+ — and that reducing Disney+ churn (that is, the number of people who cancel service in a given timeframe), “might be the single most significant opportunity that we have. And so it’s probably not surprising that I’m pushing the entire organization to prioritize against that goal.”
His commentary around making Disney+ the company’s digital centerpiece expands on similar remarks he made at the company’s 2026 annual shareholders meeting on March 18, when he took over the job from departing CEO Bob Iger.
And that general strategy was put into play under the Iger regime. Last November, Iger described Disney+’s future as “as a portal to all things Disney,” sketching out a road map for the platform to include games, commerce and AI user-generated content. (On that last area, Disney is back to square one after former partner OpenAI shut down its Sora video app — for now, derailing Disney’s plans to have fans share AI creations based on Mickey Mouse and other characters on Disney+.)
In their letter to shareholders accompanying the March 2026 quarterly earnings, D’Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston outlined a goal of making Disney+ “more central to how fans experience our brands.”
“As we look to build Disney+ beyond a premium streaming video service, we are focused on making the platform more engaging, more personalized, and more central to how fans experience our brands. Recent efforts to revamp the user interface and improve personalization are contributing to an increase in engagement,” they wrote.
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