Disney gets a good deal to finally complete purchase of Hulu
Disney gets a good deal to finally complete purchase of Hulu
The House of Mouse is paying an additional $438.7 million for Comcast’s one-third stake in the streamer.
The sale of Hulu to Disney has finally crossed the finish line. For the first time in the history of the streaming service, Hulu will now be owned 100% by the same company, as the final amount that Disney has to pay Comcast to satisfy its contractual obligation to buy out the company’s one-third stake in the service has been determined.
Key Details:
- A good deal: Disney is completing the purchase of Hulu for $438.7 million.
- Payment plan: Comcast has already received a check for $8.6 billion for Hulu.
- What’s next?: The future of Hulu is difficult to forecast now that Disney has total control.
Disney has not only completed the purchase of Comcast from Hulu, but it got a pretty good deal in the process as well. The company had to pay just $438.7 million more for Comcast’s third of Hulu, which sounds like a hefty chunk of change until it’s compared to the $5 billion that Disney could have been forced to shell out to finalize the deal.
The $438.7 million was arrived at by an independent appraiser that was brought in after Disney and Comcast were unable to settle on a valuation. The contract between Disney and Comcast provided for a price floor of $27.5 billion for Hulu, meaning that Disney would have to pay at least one-third of that total ($8.25 billion) to Comcast for its stake, which Disney paid in December 2023. That projection was set back in 2019, meaning that the value of Hulu might have climbed or fallen in the intervening years.
“We are pleased this is finally resolved,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. “We have had a productive partnership with NBCUniversal, and we wish them the best of luck. Completing the Hulu acquisition paves the way for a deeper and more seamless integration of Hulu’s general entertainment content with Disney+ and, soon, with ESPN’s direct-to-consumer product, providing an unrivaled value proposition for consumers.”
Individual bankers enlisted by Disney and Comcast to determine if Hulu was worth more than $27.5 billion came up with very different numbers in their valuations of the streamer. That meant a third appraisal by an independent firm was needed to finally settle the issue, and now that process is complete. Between Disney’s initial payment and the $438.7 million extra, the House of Mouse will have paid Comcast more than $9 billion to take total control of the service.
“Hulu was a great start for us in streaming that generated nearly $10 billion in proceeds for Comcast and created an important audience for NBCUniversal’s world-class content,” Comcast said. “We wish Disney well with Hulu and appreciate the cooperative way our teams managed the partnership.”
Now that Disney owns Hulu outright, it can look toward the future of the streamer and determine what the best strategy is not only for the service but for the company’s streaming strategy in general. That could involve folding Hulu into Disney+, making that streamer the sole entertainment offering from Disney. There have been no official announcements that Disney plans to make that move, but there are reasons to believe that it won’t keep Hulu running in the long term now that it is the sole owner.
Hulu
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