During an earnings call for The Walt Disney Company, Disney CEO Bob Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston announced plans for “a major step forward in strengthening our streaming offering by fully integrating Hulu into Disney+.” The standalone Hulu app will be sunsetting sometime in 2026. The brand will live on, however.
“This will create an impressive package of entertainment, pairing the highest-caliber brands and franchises, great general entertainment, family programming, news, and industry-leading live sports content in a single app,” Iger and Johnston said. “By creating a truly differentiated streaming offering, we will be providing subscribers tremendous choice, convenience, quality, and enhanced personalization.”
Moving forward, Hulu will become a global general entertainment brand instead of an app. In the fall, it will replace the Star tile on the Disney+ app internationally. This will make it more like other brands or studios owned by The Walt Disney Company that don’t have their own streaming service offerings. Iger and Johnston shared that in the next few months, Disney will be “implementing numerous improvements within the Disney+ app, including exciting new features and a more personalized homepage.”
“All of this work will culminate with the unified Disney+ and Hulu streaming app experience that will be available to consumers next year,” the two said.
The benefits of this change were also shared by Iger during the earnings call. “You’re going to end up with a far better consumer experience when those apps are combined by combining all of the program assets of both current apps, and with an improved consumer experience comes the ability to lower churn, which is obviously something that we’re very, very focused on and committed to doing,” Iger said on the company’s earnings call. “We obviously will deliver efficiencies. When these are together, it’ll be on one tech stack as a for instance, one tech platform. We already sell the advertising together, but this will give our sales organization a chance to package them far more effectively than they have before. I imagine down the road, it may give us some price elasticity as well that we haven’t had before, and it also provides us with a tremendous bundling experience.”
For the business end of things, the two Disney executives shared how this change would also benefit the bottom line. They shared, “This will enhance our ability to continue to grow profitability and margins in our entertainment streaming business through expected higher engagement, lower churn, and advertising revenue potential, as well as operational efficiencies that over time may result in savings that we can reinvest back into the business.”
At this point, it isn’t known how this will impact the bundle subscriptions or live television subscription offerings that are currently offered by Hulu and Disney+.
What do you think about the Hulu app being retired? Are you excited for a more streamlined experience? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!
