Disney+ will reach 57m users in the US at its launch on 12^th November through a partnership with Verizon—three times more than Peacock’s estimated immediate addressable user base, and four times more than HBO Max’s. Verizon will offer all existing and new Unlimited mobile customers a year’s free access to Disney+. Ampere estimates this to be 57m as of Q3 2019. While terms of this deal have not been disclosed, it is assumed Verizon is paying Disney+ a per subscriber fee based on a discounted retail price for Disney+.

Disney+ is not the only upcoming OTT service that plans to build reach by offering free access to its platform. Other studio-led services, WarnerMedia‘s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which are set to launch in May and April 2020 respectively, will also have substantial US user bases at launch. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max will be made available to the 10m AT&T customers that subscribe to HBO (a mix of pay TV and premium wireless customers), as well as the 5m who directly subscribe to HBO Now, at no extra cost. Comcast pay TV subscribers—21m in the US as of Q3 2019 —will get a free, ad-supported version of Peacock.

Offering free trials to mobile customers can translate to greater reach than targeting pay TV subscribers, and Disney is not the first to take advantage of this. Netflix has a US deal in place with T-Mobile, which has 47m subscription wireless customers in total, where customers on certain plans can get Netflix for free, or for a small monthly price ($2/month). AT&T has a total reach of 141m subscription mobile customers (Q3 2019) and HBO Max’s user base could be expanded by bundling a free trial to the service in AT&T mobile plans which don’t already include an HBO subscription.

Disney+ is also launching in Canada on the 12^th November, followed by Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands on the 19^th November. While it hasn’t announced any free access partnerships in these other countries, this strategy could be replicated to gain scale in other markets and could be important to compete with the other new entrants, such as NBCU’s upcoming service. Upon launching internationally, an ad-supported version of Peacock is expected to be distributed through Sky, which has a reach of 20m pay TV households in Western Europe.