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Greetings!
Walt Disney Co. certainly knows how to make a splash. Following last night's deal with the NFL, the company followed up this morning with not just its earnings results, but a slew of other announcements. They include more clarity on the launch of its ESPN streaming service (to launch the same day as Fox One) as well as the future of Hulu on Disney+.
Taken together, the announcements offer a clearer vision of where Disney is headed on a content front, and it's all about packaging content in any form that can reach audiences. But the priority will be delivering a combination of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN to consumers, which CEO Bob Iger called a "tremendous bundling experience."
On paper, it's a bundle that makes sense. Disney+'s family-friendly content, Hulu's general entertainment fare and sports from ESPN covers a lot of bases. But at a starting price of $35.99 a month, it might be too much to ask of consumers already juggling plenty of other subscriptions. Beyond streaming services like Netflix, there's your internet bill, cellular bill, cloud service storage — the list goes on, and costs everywhere are just going up.
Disney wants to be your one-stop shop for entertainment, but so does everyone else. At what point does it become too much?
There's plenty of other Disney headlines, so scroll on to scan them all.
Roger Cheng
Managing Editor of Business and PRO
roger.cheng@thewrap.com
PS: We just kicked off a free 2-week trial of WrapPRO. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Feel free to forward the news.
Disney had a busy Wednesday morning. Here's a list of everything the media giant announced:
- Disney topped expectations thanks in part to Disney+ and Hulu swinging back to a profit in the third quarter
- ESPN to launch its streaming service on Aug. 21 starting at $29.99 a month
- The streaming service will also be adding premium WWE events to sweeten the deal
- Disney will stop reporting subscriber and average revenue per user figures for Disney+ and Hulu, following a similar move by Netflix
- Hulu and Disney+ to launch a unified standalone app in 2026
- Iger said there's no priority between developing sequels vs. original intellectual property
- And last night, NFL and Disney announced that the pro football league would take a 10% stake in ESPN in exchange for media assets and a licensing deal
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DATA POINT
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