CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
PVOD isn't licensing though. What you're showing is the digital equivalent of buying the Bluray at Target.
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Disney's Streaming Services: Disney+ (and Hulu, ESPN+, Star, & hotstar)
- Thread starter MisterPenguin
- Start date
The point is: Disney gets paid.
I'm sure Disney will be selective with whom they license content to. They probably wouldn't to a major competitor like Netflix... unless the price is very right.
But then again, most streamers are cutting back on spending. So, there might not be any buyers except for the free ad-supported streamers.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
That was part of the point, as a larger distribution chain for adult content to Hulu/Star. But it wasn't the only reason.
Remember that along with the 20th Century back catalog Disney got Studio assets including 20th Century TV which already licenses out its content to other distributors including back to Fox itself. So I read this as Disney expanding its output on existing licensing agreements and building new ones for content not kept in-house.
Basically, business as usual in Hollywood with cross-Studio licensing of content.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
That's my point. It's not SUPPOSED to be business as usual. It's supposed to be paradigm shifting, brave new world, final frontier time.
Serpico Jones
Well-Known Member
Correct. This all being done because of the threat of Peltz joining the board.
Serpico Jones
Well-Known Member
Iger’s got the entire Hollywood press under some sort of spell. Any other CEO would’ve been fired long ago but Iger always seems to find someone else to throw under the bus and the Hollywood Reporter is always there to back him up and defend him.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Except that is not the correct assessment of the situation.
You will always have other studios producing content for other studios. This is especially true in TV even though they have their own television studio division.
For example you have 20th Century Television producing content for other networks:
NBC owned by Comcast/Universal.
CBS owned by Paramount
BET+ owned by Paramount
HBO Max owned by WB-Discovery
Netflix
Fox (who now doesn't have a studio)
AppleTV+
And Disney owned networks:
ABC
D+
Hulu
National Geographic
So this was never going to change.
Elijah Abrams
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Here's that article -
Disney Explores the Sale of More Films and TV Series to Rivals
Walt Disney Co. is exploring more licensing of its films and television series to rival media outlets as pressure grows to curb the losses in its streaming TV business.www.bloomberg.com
Then that defeats the purpose of the Disney/Fox merger.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
No it doesn't.
The whole point is to monetize their content, if that means licensing it out to other Studios/Streamers, ie make money from it, then its exactly the purpose of the merger.
Elijah Abrams
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
The whole point of the merger was so Disney would be able to complete Disney+.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
Fox could have licensed their own content. Disney could have licensed their own content. The only reason to pay a premium above market value for the Fox assets is if you gain something tangible by bringing them under one roof. Licensing Fox and Disney content from under the same corporate umbrella is not accretive to shareholder value.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Not going to rehash the value of the merger, that has been done to death. But I’ll just say it was more than just the content.
As a shareholder myself if Disney is not going to do anything with said content in-house(and mind you we don’t know exactly what content is being discussed here) then licensing it allows it to be monetized and bring money into the company.
For 3+ years I’ve heard it said over and over here and other places online, why isn’t Disney doing more to monetize the 20th Century back catalog. Well that appears to be one of the things Iger is doing, at least on the surface, so I’m all for it.
We’ll see what more he says next week.
Elijah Abrams
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Well, the merger was so Disney+ can not only be complete, but can also be taken around the world (with Hulu as their adult service in America and Star hub on D+ internationally). The merger wasn’t for monetizing content to others.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
I have a dairy business and you have a sugar business. It would be malpractice for me to buy your sugar business at a price much higher than market value just to continue selling dairy and sugar to third parties independently. I should only do it if I have a really solid plan to start an ice cream business that's worth way more than the dairy business and the sugar business were separately.
1. Disney gets paid. Especially if hardly anyone is watching that content on its own service.
2. License deals are almost never forever. If content becomes more popular because it was on another streaming service, then when it reverts back to D+, it may bring subscriptions with it.
3. Some streaming services are Free Ad-Supported TV channels, which are becoming very popular. If some FAST can get ad money for a particular kind of content (e.g., all 20th Century horror/thriller movies for a horror-themed FAST) better than Disney can from it sitting on Hulu, then it makes sense to give that FAST a license. And then, see #1.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Sorry but your analogy doesn't work here as Disney and 21st Century Fox were in the same markets not completely different ones as your analogy suggests.
So I'm going to boil it down as like I said I don't want to rehash the merger over again at this point.
The plain and simple fact is that Murdoch decided that 21st Century couldn't compete any longer in content distribution, especially in the new streaming wars that was starting. He had a relationship with Iger and liked how Disney was run so decided to sell. Its not Iger's fault that Murdoch didn't want to stay it alone and monetize their own catalog of content. If Disney hadn't have bought 21st Century someone would have, like Comcast. And we know that would have happened as Comcast wanted other assets that was part of the deal, including Star, so it could better compete in the streaming wars. Hence why they bid for it in the first place, but Roberts being the sore loser that he is decided if he couldn't have it that he would at least bid it up to so it wasn't cheap for Iger. I firmly believe had Roberts gone back for one more round of bids Iger would have walked away.
Again its not Iger's fault that Murdoch didn't want to monetize their own content alone. Heck they already were licensing out some of their content to other studios as it was, hence the reason why 20th Century films go to HBO Max instead of only to D+/Hulu/Star. That is a legacy deal that Murdoch setup long before the sale.
And so if it really was malpractice the deal wouldn't have gone forward, and wouldn't have been approved by shareholders. It benefited both parties at the time, and in my opinion continues to benefit Disney today. As Disney got controlling interest (and full ownership in 2024) in Hulu, they instantly got a global distribution channel in Star, got a ton of IP in the process, and Fox Marvel assets back home under Marvel as icing on the cake.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
All of this is a plausible case for buying 21CF at its market value. Iger paid substantially above that.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Had Roberts not bid it up, it would have been bought at market value (below it in my opinion).
Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
I always forget that this board skews to an American perspective.
Face it; America got the short end with the need for Hulu and Disney+ to still be separate.
Disney+ in Canada with the Star tile is content palooza, with Fox / FX galore. It is great.
Face it; America got the short end with the need for Hulu and Disney+ to still be separate.
Disney+ in Canada with the Star tile is content palooza, with Fox / FX galore. It is great.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
I agree, the truth is somewhere in the middle, ultimately. The original offer of 52.4 billion I think was decidedly below its market value. I say this because Disney had already recovered over 30 billion on divestments alone. We'll have a meaningful picture of what the Hulu 1/3 stake is next year - but it is guaranteed at 9 billion (27.5 for the total) and I'm going to assume it's going to be negotiated for a bit more than that.
I would make an argument that the foreign equivalents like the Star branding would explain the rest of the difference. More or less leaving Disney with the other big ticket items (aka all the studios and the back catalogues for free).
A comparison between the acquisition prices of other studios (Pixar, Lucas, Marvel) then really cannot be drawn because those studios back catalogues were frankly minuscule.
How much is 20th century studios, Searchlight, 20th TV, FX, and Nat Geo worth? Acknowledging some bigger closures like 2000 and Blue Sky. I would argue more than start-up studio like Pixar was or a low content provider like Lucas. But maybe not the entirety of the 19 billion run up that Comcast forced.
I think Iger had a fantastic deal originally and either was forced into its realistic true market value or slightly overpaid. Splitting hairs really. Some of the run up Iger clearly got back as Comcast way overvalued Sky. Comcast decidedly was a loser in the whole affair, they lost out on the competitive edge and overpaid quite massively for one component of it.
Another important final point is that Disney actually paid nothing for the acquisition in the end. Thanks to divestments it was all achieved via stock. Peltz cannot see that the debt load issues were strictly a covid phenomenon and not related to the acquisition.