The super aggregator hiding inside Disney+'s European deals
Stacking 15 broadcasters on top of Marvel and Pixar.
On July 2, Disney+ agreed to stream every LALIGA match to Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland for the next four seasons. All 380 games a year, plus the Copa del Rey, on ESPN on Disney+ across the Nordics through 2029/30.
You could think it’s just another sports-rights deal but it’s actually the fifteenth deal Disney+ has signed with a European broadcaster, league or distributor in the last twelve months.
You do not sign fifteen deals in a year by accident. Disney+ arrived in Europe in 2020 as a global walled garden, the same Marvel-Pixar-Star Wars box in every market. It is now morphing into something else: a European super aggregator, stacking other people’s content and rights on top of its own.
Is that a winning strategy? Let me weigh in.
Today at a glance:
Where Disney+ stands today
So Disney+ went shopping
What the 15 deals actually do
What Disney is really building
Where Disney+ stands today
Globally the headline is that subscriber count still climbed but slowed between 2024 and 2025. Disney+ went from 102.9M subscribers at the end of 2022 to 131.6M by the end of Q3 2025, on Disney’s own reporting, before it stopped disclosing subscriber numbers in Q4 2025.
Underneath that dated global number, we don’t know the subscriber count per market. BARB has Disney+ in 7.8 million UK homes in Q1 2026, up from 7.6 million the quarter before, with 2.8 million of those on the ad tier after 68% growth in a year. In Italy, AGCOM puts Disney+ at 3.7 million website and app unique users in December 2025, up 0.9% on the year. In France, the first release of Médiamétrie's cross-media measurement put Disney+ at 9.5 million monthly users in September 2025. Dataxis estimates a market share of 12% in the UK, 10% in France and Germany, 8% in Spain and 7% in Italy.
Now you do not sign 15 local deals in a year if the global Marvel-Pixar-Star Wars box is selling itself. The Disney+ value proposition is too US-centric, too thin on the local stories that keep people paying month after month. Kids and Marvel get you in the door but do not get a European household to stay through the empty months between tentpoles.
So Disney+ went shopping
Since mid-2025 it has struck deals with ITV and Sky in the UK, ARD Plus and ZDF Studios in Germany, Rai in Italy, SIC in Portugal, Atresmedia and RTVE in Spain, Gaumont, ADN and L'Équipe in France, NPO in the Netherlands, and now LALIGA across the Nordics.
Disney+ EMEA boss Karl Holmes is upfront about the logic behind these deals:
