At Business Insider’s Ignition conference, Hulu CEO Randy Freer shared that Hulu Live TV added hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the third quarter. “DIRECTV Now announced their numbers in 3Q. We grew 10x of where DIRECTV was.” according to Freer.
DIRECTV NOW added just 49,000 new subscribers in the third quarter after quickly growing to nearly 2 million subscribers. Near the end of the third-quarter, Hulu released that they had reached nearly 1 million subscribers after announcing 800K susbcribers in May.
Freer didn’t share how growth has continued into the fourth quarter, but indicated that “we’ll have our best October, our best November.” Much of the success in the fourth quarter is likely to come from their Black Friday event where they offered Hulu with Limited Commercials for just $0.99 for the next year.
While he didn’t share exact numbers, Freer did state that the overall Hulu business will likely add more users in the second half of the year than the first. The company revealed at the The NewFronts that they had added 3 million subscribers in the first half of 2018 reaching 20 million subscribers in May. Based on Freer’s comments, it looks like that they will top 23 million by the end of the year.