On the assumption that Disney will buy the remaining stake in Hulu, Bob says he is suggesting that isn't necessarily the case.
So, I actually kinda like the idea of selling Hulu from Disney's prospective. I mean, let me just state: they could keep it and buy the rest from Comcast as planned and that would be fine too. So, I'm not saying they need to sell it or anything, but I could see it making sense...
First of, the main value of Hulu is IMHO the Live TV portion. That's the unique thing about Hulu as a streamer, especially since the other similar services (e.g. Sling, YouTubeTV) aren't quite the same with an attached robust general interest streamer with originals and a library. But Disney has never had much interest in being a middle man for network delivery and it would put them in a situation where they have to regularly negotiate with other networks. And who knows how beneficial these (via internet) TV network providing services will be if more people decide they don't need a suite of cable networks? Live sports is increasingly moving to streaming and that's really a big holdout that is keeping people tied to old media networks - and ironically if Disney via ESPN bails on cable networks and pushes a lot of their live sports to ESPN+ it will probably crush all these Live TV providers.
Second, they don't need the Hulu "brand" since even if they wanted to put more general content on Disney+ in the US (like they have in other countries) they have no reason they couldn't use "Star" as the branding. Hulu has some value as a name but I'm not sure it's enough value to Disney. Ironically, it probably would have more value to other services who are looking to be more competitive in the streaming business who could use Hulu and 40-50M subscribers as a good basis to become a bigger player in the streaming wars.
Third, selling Hulu not only cashes in on what they own - can help to erase a bunch of the remaining debt from the Fox purchase while keeping a bunch of Fox assets like the film library and production studios - but also could provide a source of revenue without cost by licensing content to Hulu as they are currently doing but without having to pay to run the service. Which with the mention of being open to licensing, that might fit with that strategy.
Once upon a time, Disney had aspirations of rolling out Hulu internationally, but there's no reason for that now since they are using Star/Hotstar instead and they realized that doing so would only jack up the price they'd be obligated to pay Comcast for the rest of the service. I think their prospective has changed in the years since they made the original plan to get all of Hulu.
Interestingly, it seems like Comcast is the perfect partner to buy given this stuff. They already own a third of the service of course, but regarding the first point - Comcast is already into the content delivery business (I mean it is their core) so Hulu Live TV complements that and they have the market share to get the best (lowest) rates from networks to include on that. The second point is Peacock which is actually a nice service pretty much is floundering and merging that into Hulu would actually be a pretty solid offering in the crowded marketplace. I think it actually could make a lot of sense.
If Disney were to sell, I wonder how much Fox content they could strip from Hulu to put onto Disney for a "Disney + Star" general interest service while still leaving enough on Hulu to make it worth purchasing by another party. Obviously, the stuff already on D+ would stay and all of the Hulu originals would go with Hulu but there's a squishy in between of a bunch of stuff that they might want to retain and other they'd be willing to license out. I guess we'll see.
variety.com
