Disney CEO Bob Iger’s apparent openness to selling Hulu marks a stark reversal in strategy for the company — and an even more surprising shift if Iger sells the streaming service to Comcast.
Iger said Thursday in an exclusive CNBC interview with David Faber that “everything is on the table” with regard to Hulu’s future.
“We are intent on reducing our debt,” Iger said. “I’ve talked about general entertainment being undifferentiated. I’m not going to speculate if we’re a buyer or a seller of it. But I’m concerned about undifferentiated general entertainment. We’re going to look at it very objectively.”
Disney currently owns 66% of Hulu, with Comcast owning the rest. The two companies struck a deal in 2019 in which Comcast can force Disney to buy (or Disney can require Comcast to sell) the remaining 33% in January 2024 at a guaranteed minimum total equity value of $27.5 billion, or about $9.2 billion for the stake.
Just five months ago, then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek said he’d like to own all of Hulu “tomorrow” if he could. Chapek’s strategy revolved around eventually tying Hulu together with Disney+ to give consumers a “hard bundle” option in which viewers could watch programming from both the family friendly Disney+ and the adult-focused Hulu. Comcast’s stake in Hulu prevented Disney from moving forward with his plans.
“I would like nothing more than to come up with that solution for an early agreement,” Chapek said in a September interview with CNBC. “But that takes two parties to come up with something that is mutually agreeable.”
Chapek held a conversation in 2021 with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts to try to escalate the sale of Hulu, according to people familiar with the matter. Roberts floated a number of possible ideas, including Disney selling ESPN to Comcast, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. No substantive conversations have occurred since, the people said.
Despite the shrinking pay-TV subscriber base, ESPN and many…
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