What Disney+ Adds With Cocomelon Licensing Deal

Kids’ content has taken center stage in recent weeks thanks to a flurry of licensing shuffles among the biggest U.S. streamers.

First, was Sesame Street heading to Netflix, joined soon after by fellow children’s programming giant Peppa Pig — shifts that were already covered extensively by Alan Wolk here on TVREV.

The moves made sense, as both properties now figure to get significantly more exposure on Netflix, even in a sea of kids shows and movies that seem to grow by the day for the streaming behemoth.

What followed, however, was more surprising: Netflix would not renew its license with Cocomelon, as confirmed by Variety earlier this week.

Variety details the split, as well as the subsequent pick-up to Disney+; itself the other major competitor to Netflix’s dominance with younger audiences given its raft of both legacy and new animated content with baked-in value as intellectual property. While the article utilizes data from Nielsen that show Cocomelon declining as an anchor of Netflix’s licensed content slate, Cocomelon is also a multi-platform property, with videos appearing across a variety of services and YouTube.

To that point, Cocomelon’s YouTube presence continues to be as strong as ever.

Cocomelon monthly unique U.S. viewers on YouTube, April 2024-April 2025 (via Tubular Labs)

Tubular Labs data, in chart form above, reveals that Cocomelon properties have seen reach grow on YouTube in the U.S. — climbing by about 15 million unique viewers since April 2024. The 75.1 million unique viewer total in April 2025 made Cocomelon one of the top 15 domestic media properties, with a reach that outpaces every other digital-first kids programming other than its own parent company Moonbug (113.2 million).

Digging even deeper into Tubular data, there’s also limited (10%) overlap between Disney Junior (young children’s content) and Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes audiences on YouTube over the last six months, indicating that these are potentially a lot of new viewers for Disney+ on social video. But will they be on the service?

That’s what Disney+ is likely betting on here, as it tries to acquire a good deal of Cocomelon’s audience — many currently watching for free on YouTube — and turn them into paying customers earlier than they otherwise might have been. The Disney bundle (with Hulu and ESPN+) may make that sale easier for some households. However, there are some lingering, major questions for Disney, in general, as it continues to traverse a media environment that lacks the same reverance for legacy brands:

Do consumers need Disney’s content to the same extent they once did? And will they pay for it if they can avoid doing so?

We went through the same exercise with the value proposition of ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer service last week. While ESPN has a number of valuable entities including live NFL, NBA, NHL and college rights, plus SportsCenter, there’s also a growing number of viewers who are perfectly content consuming that via YouTube, for free.

And in an environment where YouTube is increasingly becoming the most-viewed streaming TV distributor, the importance of the app tile you press to find the content you want (especially if that content’s to distract a screaming young child) becomes exceedingly less important.

The bet for Disney+ here is that by housing a licensed property as big as Cocomelon within its established walls, it’s ensuring its relevance as THE essential app for parents where the tiles they’re concerned about are Cocomelon or the latest Pixar fare.

That’s one positive outcome for Disney, of course. The other, is a far less ideal one. From this very space (and this very author) last summer:

“But if you’re a Disney+ subscriber who also has Hulu bundled with it, you’re now getting Cocomelon, other digital-first videos and non-Disney intellectual property served up alongside the likes of Frozen and Moana. I’ve witnessed myself how Disney’s built-in advantage quickly erodes in that scenario. The kids don’t care what’s Disney and what isn’t. They don’t care about the screen it’s on or the delivery mechanism. They just see a bunch of kids programming in front of them and (provided their parents approve) opt for the most addictive content available to them.”

That scenario becomes increasingly true with Cocomelon under the Disney+ banner instead, but you could argue the same happens the other way, too. If Cocomelon is stacked up against YouTube’s best kids programming, it’s well positioned to win more often than not. But when it’s pitted against Disney? What’s the win percentage there? And to Disney and Cocomelon’s credit: Does it matter who wins as long as consumers are having the conversation, and primarily making a choice between those two options?

I’ll concede that as long as the viewing happens on Disney+, it doesn’t much matter in the short-term (even if it does in the longer view as I posited back in August 2024 above). The bigger hurdle comes as economic pressures force more conversations around whether it’s worth paying for these services for kids’ content. Or if YouTube provides all the benefit consumers need for free, until the time comes when kids have more significant preferences to cater to.

If anyone can figure out what’s next, it’s probably Disney and Cocomelon. That doesn’t mean this future is a simple one for either, however.