Disney is looking to sell its TV assets. Bob Iger built Disney into a top entertainment company by acquiring Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Now he’s looking to downsize in a big way. Apple, with its focus on sports deals for Apple TV+, may be eyeing Disney’s ESPN.
Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw for Bloomberg News:
Iger put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week, declaring Disney’s linear TV assets noncore. That includes TV networks ABC, FX and Freeform. He also said Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN — though he’s not willing to sell the whole thing — and the company is already looking to sell or restructure its TV and streaming business in India.
It’s a stunning if inevitable turn of events for an executive who spent so much of his career working in TV, and for a company that relied on cable networks for the majority of its profit… Yet the accelerating decline of cable TV has limited Iger’s options. He thought he’d solved this problem with Disney+ and Hulu, his two mass-market streaming services. But his streaming business is expected to register a loss of about $800 million in the company’s just-ended third quarter.
Management chased streaming subscribers at unsustainably low prices to goose the launch of Disney+ in 2019 and is now seeking to raise prices without alienating customers. (Disney+ lost 4 million subscribers last quarter.)
Iger put up a for-sale sign during an interview with CNBC in Sun Valley, Idaho, home to an annual summit of the media and tech elite organized by the investment bank Allen & Co… Iger’s CNBC interview was unmistakably a distress signal.
Most of the potential suitors for linear TV networks are financial entities, like private equity firms, that would milk them for cash as they decline into obscurity… The list of interested parties in ESPN is longer, and could include tech giants like Apple, as well as sports companies like Fanatics… Rumors have long swirled that Iger will end up selling all of Disney to Apple. It’s still hard to imagine Iger selling Disney to anyone. He was always a builder — not a seller. But Bob the builder is doing a lot more cutting this time around.
MacDailyNews Take: We live in interesting times.
See also:
• Apple should buy Disney to feed Vision Pro – analyst – June 7, 2023
• Is Apple looking to make a big acquisition? – April 6, 2023
• Why Apple would want to buy Disney – April 4, 2023
• Apple should buy Disney – analyst – March 30, 2023
• Apple in talks with Disney, others on VR content for upcoming ‘RealityOne’ headset – January 23, 2023
• Apple TV+ hires Disney+ exec Ricky Strauss as new head of marketing – January 3, 2023
• Bob Iger: Apple and Disney would have merged if Steve Jobs lived longer – December 21, 2021
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