Disney stated in its Q2 earnings release on Wednesday that its Disney Plus streaming service acquired 7.9 million new customers in the first three months of 2022.

This takes the total to about 87.6 million users throughout the world, excluding the 50.1 million people who have signed up for Disney Plus Hotstar overseas. Disney Plus now has 44.4 million customers in the United States and Canada, up 7.1 million from a year earlier.

The firm also said that the total number of subscribers to all of its streaming services, including Hulu and ESPN Plus, had surpassed 205 million, up from 196.4 million in January.

That’s better than the latest Netflix announcement. The streaming service announced last month that it had lost 200,000 customers in the previous quarter, its first drop in almost a decade. It’s also growing faster than HBO and HBO Max, which added 3 million new members in the previous quarter (at around 77 million total customers, HBO is still very much trailing Disney). It’s also worth remembering that Netflix has about 222 million customers.

Of course, none of these businesses are performing as well as CNN Plus, which only lasted a few weeks before folding.

Disney also claims to be making more money each Disney Plus subscription than it was previously, at least in the United States. Its average monthly income per paying member has risen to $6.32 from $6.01 previously. This is due to “an increase in retail price and a reduced percentage of wholesale subscribers,” according to Disney.

Despite this, Disney Plus is losing money at a faster rate than previously. Disney attributes this to greater production, advertising, and technological expenditures. These expenses are unlikely to decrease, and boosting rates, like Netflix did, may halt subscriber growth. All of this explains why Disney is considering launching an ad-supported tier sooner rather than later.

A last point of interest appears right at the top of Disney’s profits. The corporation claims that its revenue increase occurred despite foregoing a billion dollars in income by terminating a customer’s film and television content license deal early in order to use the material on its own streaming services.

The story doesn’t say which of Disney’s clients this arrangement was with, but the corporation was clearly ready to take a large risk in order to obtain something on Disney Plus. This might be about the Marvel episodes that were on Netflix before being unexpectedly relocated to Disney Plus in March, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.