Disney plans to merge streams later this year

Disney plans to merge streams later this year




Disney has announced that it will launch a single app to bundle programming from Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ later this year in the United States.

Disney CEO Bob Iger described the change as a “logical progression” of its DTC (direct-to-consumer, in translation) service offerings and said the three platforms would also continue to be available independently. In Brazil, the company operates the Disney+ and Star+ platforms (the international version of Hulu), which are expected to follow the merger of the parent company. This is already happening in Europe, where Star is a content option within Disney+.

Iger’s reveal comes just days before Warner Bros. Discovery launches its new Max platform, which will unify HBO Max and Discovery+. And it reinforces a consolidation trend in the streaming market.

Merging into a new app will result in an increase in the price of individual services. Additionally, Disney plans to produce less content for its services, as well as announcing it will remove some titles in an effort to improve its profitability. “We are confident that we are on the right path to streaming profitability,” Iger said.

According to him, there are exciting opportunities for advertising in the new app with the three services together. Because 40% of the company’s home ad units are addressable, advertisers can target individual viewers through a variety of characteristics. This will provide more opportunities for advertisers, while the unification will make it easier for subscribers to access more content.

Disney took operational control of Hulu in 2019, after buying 21th Century Fox, which owns 30% of the platform, and acquiring the 10% that was with Warner. Next year, the company will have to make a contractual decision to purchase/sell the 30% that it does not yet own. The binding deal will give Disney the opportunity to buy the last third of the platform, which is from Comcast (owner of Universal Pictures, the NBC channel and the Peacock platform). To make the acquisition, Disney will have to pay Comcast at least $9 billion, with the exact valuation to be determined by an arbitrator. But Comcast could also bid for 70% of the service owned by the Iger-led conglomerate.

It’s unclear whether Disney will close a deal to buy the last part of Hulu, but the company has had “constructive” talks with Comcast. “It’s very, very difficult for us to make big decisions about our investment level, our commitment to this business, we want to understand where it could go,” Iger said.

With the results of the second quarter of this year, Hulu recorded a growth of 200,000 subscriptions, a total of 48.2 million users of the platform. ESPN+’s sports segment increased 2 percent to 25.3 million subscribers. The numbers beat expectations and appeared among the company’s biggest triumphs in the recent quarter, after a 4 million subscriber drop on Disney+ in the same period.

Disney+ officially arrived in Brazil in November 2020, while Star+, the international version of Hulu, was made available in 2021.

Source: Terra

You may also like