According to Comicbook, Disney CEO Bob Iger has recently announced plans to cut down on spending by an estimated 5.5 billion. Last year Disney’s growth from owning vast amounts of networks meant larger sum of spending. Over the last few years, Disney has acquired different brands such as Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, ESPN, and many more, which has made the company an even bigger figure. The cut-down plans have come in the form of reducing budgets on production and even company-wide layoffs. Igor suggested that he would consider selling ABC, FX, National Geographic, and Freeform, but when it comes to Hulu and ESPN, Disney is hard to set on retaining control.
While speaking to CNBC, Iger said, “We’re going to be open-minded there too, not necessarily about spinning ESPN off, but about looking for strategic partners that can either help us with distribution or content. But we want to stay in the sports business. Sports is very, very attractive media, and we have a unique position, and we feel that we should stay in it.”
According to Comicbook, Disney currently owns 80 percent of ESPN, and the remainder is owned by Hearts Communications. When it comes to Hulu, Disney is the majority owner, but Comacast’s NBCUniversal still has a minority stake in the streaming service. Disney eventually plans to merge Disney+ and Hulu into one streaming service by the end of the year.
Iger explained, “Over time, when I came back, I was open-minded about Hulu because there is this agreement with Comcast that actually calls for a transaction, their stake to us, sometime in 2024 and I didn’t want that to be an automatic. I wanted to look at that objectively. I spent a lot of time looking at that as part of the future of our streaming business and ultimately concluded that we would be better off having Hulu than not having Hulu.”