Sports and children’s films, all in one place.
Photo Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Christian Petersen/Getty Images, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Everett Collection

A few months before Disney+ launched in November 2019, Bob Iger offered Wall Street analysts a fairly simple rationale for why he focused the new streamer’s mandate heavily on family-friendly entertainment and big Mouse House brands like Marvel and Star Wars. With Hulu and ESPN+ already well established, he explained, “Rather than create one giant, fat package of sports, general entertainment and family programming, we thought we would better serve the consumer by separating all three.”

Five years later, Disney still has three separate streaming apps, but the days of strict genre separation? As of this week, those days are over.

On Wednesday, Disney+ introduced a new ESPN tile that allows anyone who pays for ESPN+ as part of the Disney bundle to stream everything on that service through the Disney+ app. In this respect, it’s largely identical to the Hulu on Disney+ initiative the company launched earlier this year, although, as my colleague Savannah Salazar wrote, there are some differences. This launch also means that for the first time, anyone who subscribes to the so-called Disney Trio bundle can get the Magic Kingdom’s entire streaming portfolio through a single app experience – no page turning required. The “one gigantic, fat bundle” that Iger cautiously criticized half a decade ago is now being touted by Disney as “a seamlessly integrated viewing experience…that only the Walt Disney Company can provide.”

This may seem like a pretty big flip-flop, but A) times change and B) compared to Netflix’s about-face on advertising and password sharing, Iger’s development barely registers on the corporate hypocrisy meter. Plus, as mentioned, Disney has, at least for now does Allow consumers to choose narrower streaming apps if they wish.

It’s no big secret why Iger and Disney decided to change course, nor is it even remotely a surprise. For one thing, Disney didn’t yet have full financial control of Hulu in 2019 (Comcast was still a shareholder), which would have made blurring the lines between the platforms much more difficult. I’m also not convinced that Disney had the technical know-how at the time to manage an oversized app with live sports And Hulu content And the massive Disney+ library, or that it would have been wise to force existing Hulu customers to pay much more for Disney or ESPN programming they didn’t want. Iger’s slow approach was the right decision at the time.

Instead of consolidation, Iger introduced the Disney Bundle, which allowed people to pay one bill for two or three different services while still watching TV through separate apps. This was a good way to reduce subscriber churn and encourage Disney superfans to maximize their viewing experience. However, the one flaw with this approach has always been that with so many viewing options, if a heavy Hulu user forgets to watch Disney+ for a few days (or vice versa), they start to think they’re not getting enough of their benefit subscription and are more inclined to downgrade or cancel it altogether. That’s why Netflix has so much programming: Even if you don’t care for the last few original series, I bet you’ll stick around for one of their movies, stand-up specials, or, more recently, one of their overrated sports events. That’s a harder sell when the programming is spread across multiple apps. While the Disney bundle was a good stopgap, it always made more sense to integrate Hulu and ESPN programming into the same app that housed the Disney+ programming.

And so almost from the moment D+ launched, it became pretty clear that the Disney brothers would eventually change course and find a way to offer the streaming equivalent of the “e-ticket” that the company had been up to in its theme parks in the mid-1990s. Synergy is embedded in the DNA of The Walt Disney Company; It’s impossible that the company, which places hotels and malls in the middle of its theme parks, would eventually find a way to consolidate its entire streaming offering under one carefully considered umbrella. That’s why when Disney began streaming some ESPN+ programming on Hulu (not Disney+) in 2021, I wrote that I “wouldn’t be at all surprised if Disney eventually allowed consumers to stream all three platforms through one app.” Or why I was convinced of the need for a single-app experience earlier, less than a year after Disney+ debuted:

Understandably, Disney wants Disney+ to continue to have a strong focus on family-friendly programming, but why shouldn’t reruns of Black-ish or The Conners be available on Disney+ in addition to Hulu? is completely child-safe, it seems counterproductive to force consumers who pay for the Disney bundle to switch between three apps to find content owned by the same company… It seems illogical to have digital boundaries between the different countries within the Disney -Streaming kingdoms to draw.

To be clear, this doesn’t make me some kind of streaming Nostradamus. Numerous analysts and journalists have been talking about the consolidation of Disney streaming apps for years. Honestly, even people I talked to at Disney always said this was on the drawing board. The only debate had actually been how quickly things would move and whether Disney would also just kill Hulu completely and do what Iger supposedly didn’t want to do in 2019, which was to give audiences no choice but to pay for it individually, oversized app. At least for now, Iger appears to have opted to give consumers choices.

Now, of course, the question is whether Disney will do this in, say, another five years Despite it I think it makes financial sense to pay the overhead required to maintain standalone Hulu and ESPN apps and infrastructure, or whether there are even enough standalone Hulu and ESPN+ customers left to justify their existence . As my colleague Savannah notes below, the impending launch of ESPN’s new flagship app next year (and the likely huge price tag) suggests that Disney will maintain a separate sports-only experience, at least for a while. But as for Hulu… I’m not so sure. People have been predicting the app’s demise ever since Disney decided to launch Disney+, so I’ve learned to never discount it.

However, one of the most interesting parts of ESPN’s launch on Disney+ this week was the announcement Disney would make all of its subscribers – even those who only pay for Disney+ – the ability to watch a significant amount of programming from Hulu and ESPN at no additional cost. FX is Emmy Award-winning Shogun and ESPN staples like Forgive the interruptionand thousands of live sporting events are available to all Disney+ customers regardless of bundle status. As Disney+ President Alisia Bowen told Savannah and the other reporters who attended a press event earlier this week, this strategy will “allow these individual Disney+ subscribers to truly explore and experience a selection of our great sports and general entertainment content.” and “make it.” easier to see the full value of our package.” And if people like what they see or want to see more of it? “You have easy options to upgrade your subscription to get full access to the full content offering,” Bowen said.

What Disney is doing with this sampling approach is not dissimilar to what Amazon’s Prime Video has been doing with its channel store for years. Prime customers get regular access to full seasons of a show, such as on BritBox or MGM+, and then when it’s time to watch the second season, they’re prompted to subscribe to that service. While some people may find this annoying and gimmicky, it clearly works since so many streaming platforms continue to give Prime the ability to preview their wares. Given that upgrading from basic Disney+ to a duo package with Hulu only costs $1 more per month, this free program could be a strong incentive to upgrade.

In any case, regardless of whether Hulu continues as its own standalone app, it’s pretty clear that Disney will be relentlessly trying to get as many of its current Disney+ or Hulu individual subscribers to upgrade to a package with both. What happened this week should make that goal much more attainable.