With Disney+, Hulu Coming Together in ‘One-App Experience,’ Has Disney Decided Not to Sell Hulu to Comcast?

Like the twins from “The Parent Trap,” Disney’s streaming services are making plans to live under the same roof. In the company’s conference call following its latest earnings report, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger revealed plans to integrate Hulu content into Disney+. This move aims to create a unified streaming experience for subscribers of both services, with a “one-app experience” set to launch by the end of 2023. While Disney will continue to offer standalone options for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, this integration is designed to make Disney+ an even more indispensable part of customers’ lives.

“This is a logical progression of our [direct-to-consumer] offerings that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content,” Iger said.

The ultimate goal of this move is to increase audience engagement in order to make the streamer invaluable to every streaming customer. The announcement seems to underscore Disney’s commitment to retaining ownership of Hulu, despite the fact that Iger has been open about the possibility of selling the company's two-thirds share to Comcast.

Iger declined to predict how the negotiations for full ownership of Hulu will turn out and stated that “it has not really been fully determined,” but the contract between the two entertainment goliaths allows for Disney to acquire the remaining 33% of the streamer beginning in 2023.

In recent months, Iger has downplayed the importance of general entertainment for the company, preferring to focus more on Disney’s iconic franchises — like Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar — as well as traditional animation and family entertainment. However, general entertainment has performed well for Disney around the world under the Star+ brand. Internationally, what is considered Hulu content in the United States appears under the Star+ tile inside Disney+. On Wednesday, the company reported that in the countries in which the Star+ vertical is integrated into Disney+, subscriber totals grew by 900,000 customers to come in at 58.6 million.

It is possible — if not probable — that Iger’s comments about decreasing Disney’s involvement in general entertainment programming were just thinly veiled attempts to convince Comcast CEO Brian Roberts — one of Hollywood’s most shrewd negotiators — that Hulu did not have much value to the company. Even before Iger returned to the company last November, both sides had been publicly positioning themselves for the inevitable negotiations for full control of Hulu.

Comcast’s CEO, Brian Roberts, spoke of the sky-high valuation the streamer would have if put on the open market; likely looking to float the possibility that Comcast could sell its share of the streamer to someone other than Disney. While the specifics of how the negotiations between Disney and Comcast will work out is still yet to be determined, it seems clear that Iger is now committed to not only unifying his company’s two non-sports streamers, but also to owning them in their entirety.

“We are headed is for one experience, with general entertainment content on Disney+,” the CEO said.

Originally, Hulu had been a joint project between Comcast, Disney, and Fox as a way to bring their linear TV programming to streaming, by making them available the following day. However, in 2019, when Disney bought the majority of Fox’s entertainment assets, making it a 2/3 owner of the service, Comcast and Disney agreed to a five-year plan wherein Disney could take full control of the joint venture by buying out Comcast’s share at a $27.5 billion minimum value. At that price, Comcast’s 33% would cost at least $9.2 billion — a significant amount of money for Disney, which has yet to turn a profit with its direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming business.

Iger stated on Wednesday that the preliminary discussions between the two companies had already begun, but there was still much to be determined.

“How that ultimately unfolds is, to some extent, in the hands of Comcast and in the hands of basically a conversation or a negotiation that we have with them,” he said. “I don’t want to be, in any way, predictive in terms of when or how that ends up; I can say, we’ve had some conversations with them already. They’ve been cordial.”

No matter what the eventual cost of buying Comcast is, Iger plans to find additional profitability by adjusting pricing for Disney’s streaming services and cutting back on content costs. The regular ad-free Disney+ tier will see a price increase, while Iger hopes to see more subscribers adopt the ad-supported plan which yields a higher average revenue per user by bringing in money on both the subscription and advertising sides.

Disney already offers a price-discounted bundle of Disney+ and Hulu with ads for $9.99 per month, but customers must use separate apps to stream each one. Iger did not mention how the bundle price may change, but did state that the “one-app experience” would result in “greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience.”

In addition, the company offers Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ bundles for $12.99 per month (with ads) and $19.99 per month for an ad-free experience on Disney+ or Hulu.

In its earnings report, the company reported that its flagship streamer had experienced a decline of 4 million subscribers, marking its second consecutive quarterly drop. However, nearly all of those losses came in India, following the end of Disney’s rights to stream the incredibly popular Indian Premier Cricket matches. The company now owns the more profitable broadcast rights.

In contrast, Hulu gained 200,000 net new subscribers during the same period, reaching a total of 48.2 million. Additionally, ESPN+ grew by 400,000 subscribers, bringing its total to 25.3 million.