Submitted by CardiologistOwn5612 t3_z53vhw in television
While many see it as a positive for the company, was it worth it for them? Disney plus' strength lies in star wars, marvel and other traditional kids disney assets. They obtained hulu and fox cable networks that way, but they are an afterthought in comparison. Thoughts?
>Disney plus' strength lies in star wars, marvel and other traditional kids disney assets.
While it is true for the US and Latin America, those Fox assets are used to a much greater effect on Disney+ in other territories. Disney+ is not just a babysitter service internationally. They have all the FX, Hulu and 20th Television shows which are the best part of Disney+ imo. I believe that if it wasn't for Hulu, they'd have brought everything to Disney+ in the US. But as long as Comcast owns a portion of Hulu they can't kill and have no option but to maintain that service.
So… Star Wars and Marvel were also purchases. They may fit better with the family friendly image of Disney, but they’re still just strategic acquisitions.
In non-US territories, Fox content lives on Disney+ in their Star sub-brand, and makes Disney+ a much higher value proposition than if it was only disney/marvel/star wars content.
Unlike what Reddit claims, this has absolutely no value on why they made this deal. If they didn't have that, they would have done exactly the same thing.
EDIT : people don't seem to understand what I mean, thought it was obvious. Of course Disney knew they had it and evaluated it. It wasn't the incentive behind the acquisition and they would have done the same thing even if they didn't have the rights (hell a lot of theories, though not confirmed, were saying they would have gotten the rights back even without acquiring it themselves)
My comment had nothing to do with "what Reddit claims". I was simply adding my opinion, since big corporations these days tend to just buy out smaller companies who have what they want. Fox had Marvel properties and Disney wanted them so they bought Fox.
fin.
> Fox had Marvel properties and Disney wanted them so they bought Fox.
Except it's wrong, Disney didn't buy Fox for a few Marvel right, that would be a disastrous purchase to pay 71 billions for that. They bought it for the whole studios and the catalogue of movies/TV they got to launch their streaming service and because Fox was selling anyway and they'd prefer to be the ones to get it. It also wasn't a big company buying a small one. Fox was almost as big as Disney.
As I said, the purchase would have been made exactly the same if Fox didn't have Marvel rights
>this has absolutely no value on why they made this deal
This is reddit armchair entrepreneurism at it's absolute finest. The amount of cash Disney stands to make off of Fox-Marvel properties was ABSOLUTELY calculated into a deal of this size. That's one guy with a spreadsheet.
Someone did the fucking math, come on now. What a joke.
> But as long as Comcast owns a portion of Hulu they can't kill and have no option but to maintain that service.
I mean, technically they could sell their share to somebody else, whether Comcast or another entity entirely. (Comcast would probably work best, though, since Comcast's ability to force Disney to buy their share in 2024 would presumably still stand if not renegotiated.) But of course, they'd probably still have to wait out contracts for stuff that they already have with Hulu before they could pull everything.
I understand what you're saying, but everything I'm saying is my opinion on the primary reason for their purchase. I was obviously not in the room when the decision was made so all I can provide are my thoughts and opinions.
If people's thoughts and opinions aren't what you're looking for I don't understand why you brought this to Reddit.
I mean, it obviously didn't have "absolutely no value," but sure, I definitely agree that it would only have been a very small part of the reason for it in comparison to other factors. And sure, they would have probably done it regardless, but the purchase amount would still likely have been at least a bit different.
Selling their stake means losing 45 million subscribers and a lot of content that Hulu directly owns. I think they don't want to do that. Also, they are in an already competitive market and they don't want to strengthen Comcast or anyone else's position by serving Hulu on a platter. This is my theory but it also logically makes sense to me at least.
We live in an era where content is king (usually quantity over quality but that's a different conversation) and only those services constantly putting out new content have any value. The streaming game is about getting people to subscribe and not cancel once they've watched the show they wanted to watch. Disney needed more variety to their content offering in order to grab and hold more subs and 20th Century had a ton of it across pretty much every genre. The math isn't hard.
Comcast has expressed interest in buying Hulu, which makes sense for them. Peacock has a fraction of the subscribers, so they could just transition everything to where the subscribers are and suddenly own one of the larger streaming services. Of course, Disney hasn't seemed interest in that, likely for the reasons you mention: Why hand all those subscribers to Comcast when they can keep them in the Disney/Hulu ecosystem?
Bullshit, LOL...do you think Disney just had no idea how many people had been clamoring for a decade for Marvel to be able to get those properties back? Of course they did. They don't give a fuck about narrative completion or anything like that, but they know money. If what you're saying is true, they never would have gotten to the table with Sony to make a Spider-Man deal.
Which shows you don't know shit.
Theatrical marvel is good for Iger's ego but basically couch cushion change to the bottom line.
Disney makes the real money with the Theme Parks and ESPN cable affiliate fees.
Disney vastly overpaid for 21st Century Fox and has nearly 4 years later little to show for it.
It's new content that drives subscribers to streaming services not old catalogue content.
Yes, and now they have a VAST array of incredibly popular Fox properties to make new content with, and the merchandising that comes with it, for the rest of time.
Star wars and marvel are the ones that primarily drive subscriptions to disney plus though. Those were absolutely good purchases.
You realize I'm literally just saying someone did the math on the value of those properties, right?
You can't seriously tell me you think they just ignored it and didn't crunch the numbers. Wake up.
What incredibly popular 21st Century Fox properties?
Looking at $100+ million domestic grossing 20th Century Fox films since 2008
Disney already bought Star Wars and Marvel.
Independence Day 2 crashed and burned.
The Taken, Die Hard, Alien and Predator franchises have been milked to death.
Blue Sky got shutdown.
Dreamworks animations distribution deal ended, and they got bought by Universal.
The Alvinn and the Chipmunks licence ended and is up for sale (Paramount is the expected buyer).
That leaves Avatar, Planet of the Apes and Night at the Museum.
Listen, here in Germany i am actually mostly watching the fox stuff on disney+. Simpsons, Buffy, Sons of Anarchy, the Americans, all the alien stuff... def. shows that i subscribed and especially watched through the last months. If anything it is prime and netflix that are behind here.
That makes sense and I watch a lot of fox programming as well. It seems like in the us though disney plus is a much bigger asset than hulu though (which carries the fox programming) so it leaves me wondering just how big the fox programming really is. (Outside of x-men).
In about 10 years it’ll be. X-Men movies gonna make a billion each time imo
If they just bought that franchise though it wouldve made more sense. I see most of the fox stuff as generally more niche. My point is the main draws of disney are things purchased pre-2019, except for x-men.
They bought Fox because they were launching a streaming service and wanted more content for it. Bob Iger said as much.
The primary reason for the acquisition was not Fox's Marvel properties.
Absolutely correct. Here in Canada, Disney+ is a content monster with that Star addition. It's a bit odd to see R-rated content with full frontal nudity on a Disney platform, but I'm not complaining.
Another service we have here is Crave which combines HBO, HBO Max, Starz, Showtime, and a French premium channel. It's another content monster that seems like it'd be 4 different streaming services in the States.
Their biggest successful purchase was obviously Marvel.
Star Wars is beginning to have waning returns, but it's been a gradual slide since about 2018.
As far as FOX goes, it looks to be slow-going. It's mostly benefitted in the TV side of things with FX and FOX shows being on Hulu now. I've heard The Simpsons is the most-watched show on Disney+, which is saying something. They also had a success on Hulu with Prey and are moving forward with Alien: Romulus for Hulu as well. The X-Men characters are going to come into play after the existing contracts with previous actors expire.
Hulu is profitable, Disney+ isn't.
Fox had distribution rights to the first 6 Star Wars films, now Disney does.
X-Men, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Avatar, The Simpsons, Ice Age, Aliens, and FX are now Disney properties. There's a whole host of library content that can increase the value of Hulu or Disney+ too.
Disney has always had studios making movies outside of their animated stuff aimed at all audiences
Yes
Their strength is not the whole picture.
Fox brings a massive catalogue, merges the Marvel content, gains access to other IP’s, and is a bigger Oscar darling with Searchlight.
The downside is for consumers since the company is massive and controls a large portion of theatrical releases and two large streaming services hopelessly controlling and affecting pricing and demand.
The downside for them is that they have likely lost any opportunity for further expansion and acquisitions as they are so big as to be near monopolistic at this point.
So no Netflix, no WBD, no anything that comes around with government intervention.
It’s such a small market it’s not worthwhile for American Mega corps to bother so they just license it to the very few content providers who can make a foothold in it.
You are underestimating the value of the Fox content.
Streaming has become an important source of revenue.
This is a list the ten most streamed shows in the US about a month ago:
The Watcher; The School for Good and Evil; House Of The Dragon; The Sinner; The Blacklist; NCIS; Gilmore Girls; Love Is Blind; Unsolved Mysteries
(Nine of these shows are on Netflix, one is on HBO)
That's right, Gilmore Girls outperformed anything that's on Disney+ or on Amazon.
And Gilmore Girls wasn't a big hit when it originally aired.
Disney needed content and Fox has a massive library.
Hulu doesn’t exist outside US.
Star Wars and Marvel are the only things keeping D+ afloat.
They are far and away the only things people watch.
When they start making (hopefully actually good) X-Men movies, most likely yes.
Définitely not the case where they also carry the Star brand.
kupo88 t1_ixu1lxh wrote
Don't forget it helped them reclaim some Marvel properties that had been sold off to Fox. X-men, Deadpool and I believe Fantastic Four.