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Disney really wants you to help pay for old-school TV, and will use Disney+ and ESPN to help make it happen

Streaming is finally making a big profit for Disney... but can it help pay for the massive cost of traditional TV?

Published on Fri Nov 15 2024

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Here’s a potentially surprising piece of information: Streaming is almost as profitable enough to pay for the debt accrued by Disney’s traditional television offerings… and the House of Mouse has a plan to help close that gap in the very near future.

As announced by the Walt Disney Company in its quarterly earnings call November 14, Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ collectively made $235 million profit for the company in the last three months, up dramatically from its $47 million profit in the previous quarter. That’s a good thing, too, because Disney’s traditional TV business lost $307 million in the same period.

To be fair, it’s not as clear-cut as the above seems. After all, much of the streaming content actually comes from the traditional TV business — not everything on Hulu or Disney+ is original programming; in fact, the majority isn’t — meaning that a lot of the “loss” incurred on the traditional TV side is simply underwriting the profit on the streaming side. A better way to think about things might be to consider both elements simply “television” and let Disney appreciate that the overall loss isn’t as bad as it could have been.

Don’t worry, though, because Disney has a plan to make streaming even more of a success… and it’s by prioritizing Disney+ once again. Announced during the earnings call, December 4 will see Disney+’s catalog grow even further with the addition of ESPN+ to the service. The addition of ESPN+ to Disney+ follows the model of adding Hulu to Disney+ back in March 2024 — the content will only be available to subscribers who are bundled — with a twist: some of the ESPN content will be available to all Disney+ subscribers even if they don’t have a bundled subscription.

The move comes ahead of 2025’s launch of the as-yet-unnamed “ESPN flagship” streaming service; when that offering goes live, subscribers will also have access to additional content inside Disney+. In other words: keep signing up for more things, get more content inside Disney+. It’s certainly a value offering… but can it make streaming profitable enough to pay for the rest of the television business?

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.