{"id":128066,"date":"2025-08-08T03:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T03:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128066\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T03:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T03:49:11","slug":"how-netflix-won-the-streaming-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128066\/","title":{"rendered":"How Netflix won the streaming wars."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Approximately two months ago, Disney closed a deal with Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, that sealed Hulu\u2019s fate. The House of Mouse owned a majority stake in the junior streamer, but Comcast retained a 33 percent share, and Disney had been itching for full control over the app for years. By June, the two corporate giants had finally ironed out an agreement whereby Disney bought out NBCUniversal\u2019s remaining stake in Hulu, working the books so as to underpay<\/a> its entertainment rival and reap a multibillion-dollar tax benefit<\/a> in the process. But the more pressing goal behind that transaction became clear this week, when Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on an earnings call that his company will phase out Hulu\u2019s individual app and \u201cfully integrate\u201d it into the Disney+ platform, centralizing both services around one ad server<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hulu is getting buried, but it\u2019s not dead yet. Going into next year, viewers will retain the choice of picking only a Hulu subscription or a Disney+ subscription\u2014although, no matter what, they\u2019ll have to access one or the other through Disney+ itself. Meanwhile, the plan to merge Hulu With Live TV, specifically, with Fubo (the once indie live-sports streamer that\u2019s now majority owned by Disney<\/a>) is still in the works, with the latter set to absorb all of the Hulu-cable bundle\u2019s branding and rights by next year.<\/p>\n

In other words: Disney, going forward, is putting its property into the streaming game for the long haul, and it will leave hesitant nonsubscribers with no choice but to tether themselves to Disney. Hulu, for all intents and purposes, will exist only in ghost form. It\u2019s kinda like how Amazon is absorbing the entire Freevee streaming service and killing off its individual app\u2014except with much more outcry from the populace, considering how long Hulu has thrived as a far more distinctive brand with plenty of subscribers.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a noteworthy trend here: Disney is clearly impatient to ensure that its subsidiary brands are, to consumers, automatically synonymous with Mickey Mouse, just as Freevee now is with Amazon. Already, Disney+ users could access many Hulu exclusives<\/a> through the parent-company-branded app, but Hulu die-hards could not see anything from Disney+ in turn. Fubo is not fully owned by Disney and thus not the docket for full absorption (yet). But the House of Mouse owns enough of the smaller sporting enterprise that it can use it as a testing ground<\/a> for the greater Hulu phasedown. More pertinent to Disney is that Fubo is a part of its portfolio at all; the small streamer had sued Disney on antitrust grounds after it announced a partnership with Fox and Warner to pool together their resources for a megasize sports platform. Disney\u2019s respective 70 percent purchase of Fubo stakes was meant to toss some loose change, make the suit go away, and keep Disney focused on its in-house sports missions. It\u2019s all in the family, and it happens to be a big family.<\/p>\n

This leads us to another industry-shifting announcement Iger made on Wednesday. Just one day before Disney\u2019s earnings call, its subsidiary brand ESPN announced that it would be more closely intertwined with the NFL than ever before<\/a>. America\u2019s still-dominant athletic league would get a 10 percent stake in ESPN, and the iconic channel would acquire plenty of properties once owned by the NFL. These include broadcasting rights to RedZone\u2019s popular Sunday-afternoon game analyses, a new status for ESPN Fantasy Football as the league\u2019s official fantasy offshoot, and total ownership of the NFL Network from the airwaves to the digital streams. Iger also confirmed Wednesday that ESPN\u2019s official streaming app will launch in two weeks<\/a>, bringing all the network\u2019s multichannel offerings into a $29.99-a-month subscription.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ESPN, which is still too recognizable to suffer the same fate as Hulu, will be centralized into one core streaming product with even more sports than ever before: The House of Mouse is also paying the WWE way more money<\/a> than Peacock could ever pony up for WrestleMania and Royal Rumble, thus wrenching those live events away from NBCUniversal along with the last bits of Hulu. Now the only other streamer with a compelling wrestling offer is Netflix, which holds the license for the popular livecasts<\/a> of Monday Night Raw. As if that weren\u2019t enough, sporting fans will be highly incentivized to take the new app as well as Disney+ in a bundled package that costs the same as the ESPN streaming app, about $30 a month.<\/p>\n

It was almost as if Iger and his team foresaw the bearish reactions when they informed investors that Disney\u2019s current streaming arrangement wasn\u2019t really taking off<\/a>. There was a broader message from all the added and centralized goodies the company was adding to its digital ecosystem: The House of Mouse, like the rest of the entertainment world, has resigned itself to chasing after Netflix as the competition remains far behind\u2014and, in response, will push its core brand to the top, making it as ubiquitous as possible within the streaming world. It\u2019s not a coincidence that Iger also mentioned Wednesday that his company would stop publicly reporting those middling subscription numbers<\/a> for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ from here on out\u2014you know, just like Netflix stopped doing this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was once a time when entertainment giants shared their valuable shows and movies with one another, allowing Netflix to stream and distribute certain movies, or sharing the streaming rights to a particular show with a competitor, or teaming up to share a particular sporting league with the entire country. What we\u2019re seeing now with these historic TV-and-movie empires is something more territorial, more bloodthirsty: pivots to streaming that are no longer as interoperable with other services, brand synergy that insists upon keeping the parent-company logo in view at all times, and particular niches that may stand out as the virtual kaleidoscope of streaming takes out what\u2019s left of the cable-and-broadcast landscape.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a long game from Disney, and an aggressive one. Such business decisions can be witnessed across the industry: The restoration of the HBO Max brand (fka Max, fka HBO Max) was symbolic of David Zaslav\u2019s move to hoard Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s crown jewels. As the company splits back up into two separate firms<\/a>, Zaslav has focused on three core brands\u2014Warner Bros., HBO, DC Studios\u2014at the expense of everything else. HBO Max\u2019s formerly sprawling streaming library has been gutted. The varied \u201chubs<\/a>\u201d that once featured within the app (e.g., Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, Sesame Workshop, the NBA) have been purged<\/a> or sold off<\/a>. What\u2019s left is a narrowed, frumpy prestige app that feels like HBO Now and HBO Go, complemented only by a limited window of BritBox previews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can also look at Paramount, which closed<\/a> its controversial<\/a> (and likely politically motivated<\/a>) merger with Skydance Media just this week. The game there is also digital. As CNN\u2019s Brian Stelter noted<\/a>, the first memo from the overarching Paramount-Skydance CEO\u2014David Ellison, the son of infamous tech oligarch Larry Ellison<\/a>\u2014\u201cused the word \u2018tech\u2019 ten times,\u201d with a matching focus on \u201cParamount\u2019s streaming businesses and upgrading the company\u2019s outdated technology systems.\u201d The melding of Showtime\u2019s once-individual app with Paramount+ as a \u201cPremium\u201d<\/a> was just a precursor.<\/p>\n

With the new merger, both Paramount+ and Pluto TV are the key streaming businesses, and they\u2019ll surely be at the front of Ellison\u2019s efforts to make his conglomerate \u201ca next-generation media and technology leader<\/a>.\u201d One key indicator as to how this will unfold: exclusive yearslong rights to stream South Park on Paramount+, yanking its dozens of seasons away from HBO Max. (Whether Ellison will keep his hands away from the show\u2019s biting criticism<\/a> of his business remains to be seen.) On top of that, a deal to use his dad\u2019s artificial intelligence infrastructure to make Paramount+ a more algorithmically driven streaming platform\u2014in the vein of Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ellison is simply voicing the transition that\u2019s been well underway. Even smaller players understand this now. Is Roku still primarily a maker of streaming hardware and smart-TV software? Nope\u2014it\u2019s buoyed by its own streaming services<\/a>, thanks to its namesake Roku Channel, its acquisition of the Frndly streamer<\/a>, and its launch of a cheaper paid service<\/a> known as Howdy. (By the way, much like with Netflix, you should no longer expect Roku to report the subscription counts<\/a> for any of those.) What\u2019s driving Fox Corporation\u2019s growth? Per the Murdochs\u2019 admission, much of it comes from ad sales for Tubi<\/a>, an app unique in the fact that it remains totally free; now Fox wants to shore up its own brand synergy with a \u201cFox One\u201d app<\/a> that will stream live Fox TV, Fox Sports, and Fox News (as separated from the Fox Nation service). Why is Lionsgate slumping<\/a>? Perhaps because it divested from Starz and has yet to replace that brand with a viable in-house streaming component.<\/p>\n

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    Netflix, having been first to the party, is still the king. It\u2019s the only service that can operate like a free-for-all hoarder, gobbling up whatever it wants and scaling at its own pace, because it was the pioneer that forced the old guard to catch up with its internet-centric model. Other entertainers, far too late to the streaming world or far too generous with sharing their properties, are finally, belatedly shaping up. It\u2019s no longer about just offering as much as you can (Max\u2019s mistake), granting junior brands any level of autonomy (Disney\u2019s and Paramount\u2019s and Amazon\u2019s and HBO\u2019s mistake), underdeveloping the digital experience (Paramount\u2019s and Disney\u2019s and HBO\u2019s mistake), or simply hoping that big libraries will bring in big subscriber numbers and hard dollars (everyone\u2019s mistake). It\u2019s about ensuring that the territory you do have stays your territory alone, and that it\u2019s synonymous with your broader company name.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe\u2019re at a point, given the way we\u2019re operating our businesses, where we don\u2019t really look at being in the linear business and the streaming business. We\u2019re in the television business,\u201d Bob Iger said on Wednesday. Forget it, Hulu\u2014it\u2019s Disney+.<\/p>\n

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