• by Wayne Friedman , May 16, 2023

In the wake of Walt Disney’s recent reversal with regard to Hulu, with majority owner Walt Disney now placing higher value on the service, Comcast Corp.’s Brian Roberts believes it is more than likely that Comcast will sell its 33% Hulu stake back to Disney next year.

This will give Disney 100% control of the company. Disney has had an option to buy back its Comcast stake, according to an existing agreement.

“It is more likely than not that we will go through what we have said all along,” says Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Corp., speaking at a MoffettNathanson media conference on Tuesday.

Roberts added that a deal is likely to go ahead next year.

“Part of the calculus of why I think that this is the case is that Disney recognizes -- as anyone else would recognize -- that Hulu is really valuable,” said Roberts.

He adds that any buyer getting around a 50 million-subscriber premium streaming service -- second only to Netflix in terms of viewing share, according to Nielsen -- is very hard to find and would give any buyer an immediate strong position.

Roberts says that with Hulu, the company could get a huge amount of content from Walt Disney and Fox -- the latter from an enormous $71 billion deal Disney made for movie and TV content and studios operations with the company then known as 20th Century Fox in 2019.

Roberts' new consideration arose from Disney's earnings phone call, where the company announced it would be offering a new combined, ad-supported Disney+/Hulu service as an addition to the existing, separate Disney+ and Hulu options.

Earlier this year, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger was concerned that there was not much differentiation between Hulu and other ad-supported streaming services -- in terms of the so-called “general entertainment” category. Those existing platforms include the Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto TV and Peacock.

Hulu is still by far the strongest among all streaming ad-revenue players -- estimated to get to $4.82 billion this year after a $3.89 billion total in 2022.

Iger now sees Hulu's major strength in coming from this dominant position, which to an extent could help bolster Disney+'s efforts to grow its ad business.