Diego Lerner, an Architect of Disney’s Overseas Expansion, Dies at 71 

Argentina’s Diego Lerner, a guiding force for The Walt Disney Company’s roll out in Latin America and Europe from 1990 to this year, died Dec. 18 in Buenos Aires at the age of 71 after a long illness.

In a gesture from Disney, Lerner had been named honorary president of The Walt Disney Company Latin America in November with Martin Iraola taking over in that post.    

A private funeral was held for Lerner on Friday attended by close creatives such as Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, creator of “The Boss.”

Related Stories

Tig Notaro Says She's Writing a 'Hot Lesbian Action' Movie With Zack Snyder

A consummate company man, Lerner spent nearly 35 years at The Walt Disney Company, in a career which straddled pretty well perfectly the two great surges in the TV business over the last 30 years: the “long expansion or ‘golden age’ of multichannel pay TV in the region,” and “the strategic pivot toward streaming, Disney+, and local production,” noted Omdia Senior Research Director Maria Rúa Aguete.

Lerner had always insisted that the key to success is “not technology but storytelling. What matters is the quality of content. Scripts are still king,” as he told Spanish-language website ConverCom in 2019.  

“He contributed to the Company and to its legacy of storytelling in an immeasurable way,” Disney said Friday in a statement, picking up on his philosophy.

“We extend our deepest condolences to Diego’s family as well as to his friends and all who are touched by this loss. I know I speak for all of us at Disney in acknowledging just how much Diego will be missed, but I’m very grateful for our nearly 35 years of collaboration and friendship,” said Bob Iger, CEO The Walt Disney Company.   

What Lerner Achieved: Rolling out Disney

Joining Disney in 1990 as exec director of its video and pay-TV divisions for Latin America, he made what would become classic corporate moves, such as the launch of direct distribution operations in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, attuned to local sensibilities but all the more to combat piracy in Latin America. To that date, judges there had mostly dismissed Disney’s complaints about IP damage as “too “abstract,” he told ConverCom in 2018.  

In the early to mid-1990s, pay TV penetration in Latin America was still in single digits, running well-under 10 million, according to Omdia. 

Promoted to president of The Walt Disney Company, Latin America, as the region experienced sustained growth driven by cable roll-out, later accelerated by DTH, Lerner scaled as Latin America scaled, launching channels to have a larger slice of the subscriber cake: Disney Channel in 2000, Jetix in 2004 and Playhouse Disney in 2008. 

Lerner also battled to integrate all lines of business in a single vertical operation, creating a template for Disney’s international operations, Disney itself has recognized.  

He did so well in Latin America in fact, that in 2009, he was appointed president of The Walt Disney Company in Europe, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), to apply his expertise to Disney’s No. 1 overseas market, a rare honor for a Latin American. Based out of London, during his mandate, Lerner drove “continuous improvement in consumer affinity,” Disney noted in 2017 when another challenge loomed: the industry shift from linear growth to streaming competition. 

Disney+ Launch and the Drive Into Local Content

Netflix had launched early in Latin America, in 2011. It also used the region to create its first totally non-English originals in the world: Mexico’s “Club of Crows” in 2015 and a year later Brazil’s “3%,” 80% of whose viewers came from outside Brazil. A new business model was born, based on local, sometimes breakout shows and movies, made on a global scale. 

What marked Lerner out was not only a strategic growth vision, but a sensibility about the value of local creation. Already in 1997, Buena Vista International Latin America had boarded the Pablo Bossi-founded Patagonik Film Group, partnering with Argentinian media conglom Clarin and Spanish telco Telefónica. Having co-produced Alan Parker’s “Evita,” starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas, Patagonik went on to produce several of the greatest modern Argentine films: Fabián Bielinsky’s “Nine Queens,” which launched Ricardo Darín, and Juan José Campanella’s “Son of the Bride.”

Lerner returned to Argentina, appointed once more president of   The Walt Disney Company Latin America in late 2018.

In November 2020, Disney+ announced that it had more than 70 original productions in various stages of development and production in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia. “At The Walt Disney Company Latin America, we know how important locally relevant stories are to our audience,” Lerner said at the time. 

Disney had already bowed a rich line of what TWDC exec producer Leonardo Aranguibel called “true life fictions,” such as Juan Gabriel bio “Since I Met You” (2016) and “Selena’s Secret” (2018), both made with BTF Media, and, arguably the best of them all, “Monzón,” (2019), from Bossi’s Pampa Films. Since then, Disney has produced flagship “Santa Evita,” backed by Salma Hayek and Rodrigo García, “Nada, Robert DeNiro’s first TV show with a character role and its biggest gem, “The Boss” (“El encargado”), now on Season 3. 

Lerner could be heavy involved in production. While in Europe, he helped originate teen musical novela “Violetta” (2012-15) which became a phenomenon. His was the idea for the ambitious drama series “Limbo,” a Canneseries 2022 world premiere. 

He was essentially, however, an entrepreneur but could move at the highest political levels and also knew how to get his way, his art of persuasion based on knowing what other people wanted, and giving them a good part of that. 

Arguably, Lerner’s crowning moment came over 2019-21, when he inherited 50% of rights to Argentina’s soccer Primera Division, shared with TNT, the jewel in the country’s content crown, after Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Via Fox and ESPN, Disney now had an estimated 64% of TV sports rights in Argentina. 

Lerner and Disney had everything against them. He was a close personal friend of ex-president Mauricio Macri – he and his wife would have lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Macri. Argentina was governed by Alberto Fernández and ex-President and now VP Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who trounced Macri in 2019 general elections. Cable operator Telecentro was offering $10 million more. In October 2020, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) terminated Fox Sports ownership of Argentine Primera Division soccer rights. Fernández was said to have – not unreasonably – anti-trust concerns about Disney’s dominant sports market position. 

Lerner looked for allies on Argentina’s center-left, who would argue the case, such as Sergio Massa, president of Argentina’s Congress, and a Fernández ally. Disney also sold Fox Sports channels. He could boast Disney’s record, exporting Argentine hits to the rest of Latin America when leaned on Fernandez de Kirchner in 2012. A Macri ally wrestling soccer rights from a Kirchnerist coalition was thought impossible. But it’s exactly what Lerner achieved. In Jan. 2021, he announced that ESPN would to go on sharing Primera Division games with TNT, with a contract through to 2030.