Disney Finally Hits Streaming Profit, and It’s Early, Too

 

Streaming profit has been the watchword of the last few years as Wall Street looked past mere subscription growth and started demanding balance sheets in the black. This kicked off a race to the top for most of the major streaming services, with Netflix, which was already fully in profit, the only service with breathing room. Disney+ can now join it. Our expert entertainment attorney Los Angeles USA, Blake & Wang P.A.’s Brandon Blake, brings this good news to the table.

                                                                      Brandon Blake

Beating Timelines

Disney targeted streaming profits by the end of Q4 2024 or the first quarter of 2025. It has managed to beat its own time frame, mostly off the back of the astronomic performance of Inside Out 2. They reported $47M in profit for their direct-to-consumer services in Q3. This compares highly favorably to the $512M loss of the same period last year!

 

Ironically, this was also built off of the sports streaming success that is ESPN+. Disney+ and Hulu actually lost $19M, with $5.8B in total revenue. However, Hulu and Disney+ should catch up in the next quarter, especially with upcoming price hikes for their streaming plans from October 2024.

Small Subscriber Growth

Although it is something of an afterthought to the move into true profitability, Disney also onboarded a moderate number of new subscribers, closing the quarter at 118.3M, versus the 117.6M of the previous year. Hulu accounts for 46.7M SVOD subs and 4.4M for Hulu + Live TV.

 

Although Inside Out 2 has not yet ended its theatrical release, it was a great boost to Disney’s bottom line through licensing and content profits, contributing to a 3x rise in profits for their overall entertainment segment ($1.2B, vs. the $408M of last year). With the fantastic performance from Deadpool and Wolverine coming in the next quarter, Disney should be looking at a very positive year indeed.