Was Disney's Fox purchase a huge waste of money?
Was Disney's Fox purchase a huge waste of money?
70 billion dollars and what really do they have to show for it?
The purchase gave them an insane amount of debt so they immediately laid off a lot of former fox employees and recently laid off 7000 employees to save them 5 billion.
They also haven't done much of anything with the Fox catalog.
Most of the new 20th century films were unceremoniously slapped onto Hulu streaming.
- Hellraiser 2022
- Prey
- New Mutants
- No Exit
- Barbarian
- Boston Strangler
- Crater
And more were all put on streaming and forgotten. Some of these movies were pretty good and could have made some money in theaters. I really liked Barbarian myself and Prey got a ton of praise.
What exactly did they get that was worth 70 billion? Avatar? The Simpsons? They could have just licensed those for Disney+ and saved a ton of money. Most of Fox's properties don't fit Disney. What are they even going to do with Alien, Predator, and Planet of the Apes? If Prey is any indication they aren't interested in putting them in theaters.
Before someone says X-Men what the hell have they even done with them? Some lame cameos. I'll never forgive them for the quicksilver gag in Wandavision. They got beat bad by Fox in the who has the cooler quicksilver so they make him a dick joke. Great.
They aren't going to do anything with the X-Men anytime soon. The 3rd Deadpool movie seems to be the only thing even cooking and that seems to be more because Ryan Reynolds is pushing it. If you're an X-Men fan you must be disappointed. Remember when we had an X-Men movie about every year? Say goodbye to those and Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes.
FX seems to be doing alright but all to adult for Disney so to Hulu it goes. Why did they make a big deal out of Disney+ anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to have one app? Put it all on Hulu. Why are their two apps with very different interfaces for one company?
Now that Disney is losing money in streaming and with recent flops I think this deal needs to be scrutinized more. Blame Capitalism or streaming mania but I have to say even from a business standpoint it makes no sense at all.
What do you think? Was this the beginning of the end for Disney's box office dominance? A bad play to kill Netflix? Or is Disney planning something that will take years to bear fruit?
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The value of an acquisition is almost never about synergy, assets, tech, or the catalog you got out of it.
It's usually about extinguishing competition and squeezing any remaining juice from your core offerings and products at a higher price.
They still have significant competition from other streamers and a lot of their Fox properties are on Hulu rather than Disney Plus. They are bleeding subscribers and they can't afford to raise prices too much. I know they are going to raise prices soon but it's a careful balancing act they can't afford to make it too pricey.
By acquiring fox they have 60% ownership interest in Hulu. It's that simple.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/hulu-and-disney-subscriptions-are-going-up-heres-how-much/
I'm sure the timing is coincidence and has nothing to do with Disney controlling the largest market share of streaming services.
Nearly every acquisition is about extinguishing competition and squeezing more juice from your core products. It's why oil and gas buys green tech to toss it in the bin, it's why Google buys waze and essentially halts development on it, it's why Microsoft bought blizzard. They extract any value from what they bought but that is secondary to eliminating a company that they'd have to compete with on price.
https://dealroom.net/blog/biggest-m-a-deals-2022
Every coy news article that pretends there's some sort of 3d chess going on or some big unknowable synergies is a joke. They'll give the acquired divisions to some much more competent middle managers to see if there's any value to extract, but it's secondary to the main objective. Disney would much rather collaborate with n-1 competitors (Netflix is really it?)
I think MS buying Activision is also a losing play but MS is in a better position to spend that kind of money compared to Disney.
If the strategy was to kill Hulu then why keep it around? Just axe it or sell it and put all your stuff on one app. I also don't get the Paramount+ and Showtime strategy. If you are trying to beat Netflix by having better content why split it into 2 apps?
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time. Might be time to reevaluate streaming in general.
Long term they may axe hulu but comcast still has an ownership interest. For now they have subscribers and show contracts that are probably limited to that platform. Let them expire, renew what's earning, and write off any homegrown content for whatever % of goodwill of the acquisition price it accounts for. Most importantly though - they'll continue to raise prices unabated.
I can't predict the future but they'll probably let hulu stagnate for the next few years and payoff remaining shareholders when its time to snuff it.
Can't comment on Microsoft and Activision too much, but it will be the same drivers. Microsoft has been pushing game pass aggressively at a loss, and when companies are operating at a loss in a product segment they're in the extend phase. They're also very publicly focused on xbox market share. Maybe the next COD game will be gamepass exclusive or something dumb like that, idk.
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time.
I'd be cautious jumping to that conclusion. Netflix, Disney, and Amazon are all extremely profitable. The news makes it sound like there's blood in the street but its just that earnings aren't growing exponentially as fast as before. The smaller ones might be having trouble competing but I haven't really looked in to it.