Disney’s spending $8.6 billion to finally buy all of Hulu
After years of sharing custody of Hulu with NBCUniversal, Disney is finally ready to own two fully functioning streaming services
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Serving as a massive boon to those of us occasionally come under professional obligation to answer the question, “Hey, who owns Hulu?”, Disney announced today that it’s about to spend a bit more than $8.6 billion to make the answer “Us, and us alone, at last.” The company will be paying said billions to Comcast/NBCUniversal, which has long owned a third of the company, which has led to a series of bickerings over the years with Disney about who was going to buy the other chunk, and when.
Historical sidebar time! This rather odd arrangement came about because Hulu was originally devised, back ‘round 2007, as a multi-company attempt to break into the streaming market charted by Netflix, without anyone having to go nuts and, say, have every major studio just build their own streaming network from scratch and then make them all compete in a horribly fractured online media landscape. (Whoops!) Originally chartered by Comcast and Fox, the service eventually got buy-in from most of the big TV makers—and then, when Disney bought most of Fox’s assets in 2019, the company ended up having a 66 percent stake in the whole project, essentially putting it in charge of the whole shebang.
In the subsequent years, Disney has struggled, on occasion, with the very good question of why the hell it owns two fully functioning, essentially separate streaming services, making several pushes to tie Hulu and its subscriber base more tightly to its own native Disney+. That’ll probably only accelerate now that it’s finally moving forward with buying out Comcast’s share, so expect those “Bundle your Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions together!” offers to start getting more aggressive, bordering on threatening, over the next year or so.
The sale (and, more importantly, the sale price) are still subject to an appraisal of Hulu’s actual value; Comcast will almost certainly try to argue that Hulu is valuable enough to be worth a bit more than that $8.6 billion for a third-share, which is based off of a floor value for the service that the two companies agreed to back in 2019. The sale will likely moved forward some time in 2024.
20 Comments
Poor Hulu. No more two Christmases but instead has to stay at mean Papa Iger’s house the entire time.
Original Hulu was great. I don’t think I have watched a single thing on it ever since they started charging subscription but still making you watch commercials.
They don’t make you watch commercials. They offer you a discount if you agree to.
Disney did need a platform to put the more adult-oriented movies/shows it owns now, and I guess Hulu will be it.
Donald Duck Does Dallas.
101 Ejaculations
They all started out as black dogs..
Deep Bill
he’s already dressed for the part
I mean that’s what Disney+ in Europe basically is.
Disney sort of wants to try with Deadpool in the US, but they are complete pussies in the US.
Hulu After Dark
Hulu After Duck
Finally, Song of the South can come out of the vault!
Seriously. Disney+ is something I have occasionally added to my Hulu because it’s mostly kids stuff with some Marvel and Star Wars, which come on a regular pattern like the shows on the other services to which I occasionally subscribe.
Now that they have Doctor Who, along with the Star Wars and Marvel and because they have a reasonable bundle price, I may just keep it on top of the Hulu, I have kept it since the service was in beta. Though if the price were to increase, Disney+ would be the one to go because my kids are grown.
This probably won’t tip the scales into breaking Disney up into 20 different entities yet. But it needs to happen.
Yo Disney I just found a few shares from that original deal in my couch cushions. I will settle for $8.6 mil.
Now that they own two streaming sites they’ll stop pulling stuff from streaming, right? …Right?
The sad thing is that original, free Hulu (from , yoke, 16 years ago) with new and old shows drawn from a studio collective with minimal short commercials was the ideal hangout TV everyone really wants now. We’ll never get that genie back in the bottle. Enjoy your ever more expensive “prestige” TV everyone with its constantly disappearing content and fewer and fewer new shows and everything a rehash of exhausted IP.
If they remove Letterkenny, Shoresy, and The Bear I’m going to be angry.