In the continuous streaming wars born from the greed of companies trying to copy the success of Netflix, we are approaching another service merger with Disney+ and Hulu. Disney’s complete buyout of Netflix has seemingly been moved up till this month.
The first major streaming wars merger was when Discovery acquired a majority of Warner Bros. from AT&T and merged their Discovery+ service with HBO Max to create “Max”. Then SONY acquired Crunchyroll from Warner Bros. and merged it with Funimation Now. Then Paramount announced the merger with Paramount+ and Showtime.
Now, we inch closer to Disney merging the Hulu service with Disney+ due to legal obligations. Hulu started out as a joint venture between Disney, 20th Century Fox and Comcast. When Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2019, they gained an additional third, making them the majority owner.
Now Disney finds themselves in a bit of legal limbo as they are seemingly required to buy out the remaining third from Comcast due to a previous agreement. Originally, the deadline was to be the beginning of 2024. But now, in a recent update, Disney and Comcast have moved up buyout discussions to the end of September. They seem eager to rip the bandage off.
Comcast CEO Bryan Roberts had this to say following the announcement:
“We are excited to get this resolved. And the minimum $27.5 billion that people have bandied about, that was a hypothetical that we picked five years ago because Disney has control of the company. The company is way more valuable today than it was then.“
However, Comcast feels the company is worth much more, noting that Hulu is the second largest service, after Netflix and the later has a valuation of $200 million.
This situation isn’t exactly the same as Disney owns a lot of the content and a fair amount of value would be the lower churn created by Hulu bundles with Disney+ or ESPN.
But with Disney’s current financial stumbles at the box office, theme parks, and box office, they may try to get a lower estimate. However, Disney and Comcast would each need an appraisal, and if the amounts are too far apart, a third-party appraisal would need to be completed. 
The streaming wars have taken many victims in what feels like a short amount of time. With the continued mergers and buyouts, it is only a matter of time before we see them all condensed into a handful of services like it was just five years ago.
Source: CNBC
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