I responded to DB2 about your last post…just above your last post. You have did not read it before posting.
I am over myself. That was easy. 
Meanwhile you are outdated. Even going back to the Disney commissioned report on the value of divesting ESPN.
Goofy,
A full deck has 52 cards. You are working with two cards, ESPN and ESPN + from a rather warped deck of cards put out there by Disney.
What is the cheapest way to subscribe to ESPN?
Sling TV is the cheapest option if your goal is to save money. Hulu + Live TV is best for those who want live channels and lots of on-demand content. Hulu + Live TV now includes Disney+ and ESPN+.
Over the last couple of years people have had NetFlix etc…so the logic is get ESPN + and Disney +. That wont last. People will go to the smaller bundles further cannibalizing ESPN.
People wont knowingly pay more.
The patriarchs of every family love to bring costs down.
My dad is the king of knowing where the deals are in some things. Tires forget Costco our regional chain is much better. Cell phone costs? Forget ATT or Verizon, Consumer Cellular is a much better deal unless you have Comcast phone service. Consumer Cellular is an ATT reseller.
Ah, now I think I understand. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
ESPN runs 12 networks in the US: If you subscribe to Sling, you can get 3 of them. For that privilege you may pay as little as $40/mo rather than paying $10/mo directly to Disney. That doesn’t sound like a sweet deal to me, but maybe math is different where you live.
If you subscribe through Hulu, you can get ESPN+ (some programming not available, including some marquee events, according to their fine print) for the low low price of $70 to $83/mo. Of course you get other stuff too, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Presumably Hulu, Sling, etc. get some sort of “large customer discount” for bringing subscribers to Disney, but I’ll wager it’s not a big discount as Disney knows the value ESPN and/or ESPN+ brings to their channel line-up. (Sling is losing customers, Hulu is gaining, FWIW.)
Yes, you can get some packages with no ESPN at all, and that’s good. I’d rather pick my channels rather than pay for them and not watch, but if what you want is ESPN (research shows that’s abut 20% of the country, not including commercial establishments like sports bars, restaurants, etc.) then Disney is going to get a ton of money. Commercial licenses cost more.
For the record, ESPN also has exclusive contracts with several collegiate sports conferences, a few of those games are on the “main channels”, the others are reserved for “back channels” only available by subscription. Those include the Longhorn network, SEC and ACC, and there are a lot of alumni who want to watch their college games. You don’t get this with Sling or your other bundling services, unless it’s a full subscription to the ESPN+ service.
Worth noting that I hold no love for ESPN. I’ve probably watched 8 hours in 20 years (Michael Jordan biography). Otherwise, I don’t care. I don’t know why you do, except somebody there once wronged you or something. Keep flailing, every time you dig the hole deeper.
It’s a decent business. Even Peltz has figured it out.
2020
123.6 million (2020)
=================
snippets from cnbc
More than 80 million U.S. households have been paying about $20 per month for sports networks that haven’t been airing live sports.
U.S. professional and college sports have come to a standstill amid coronavirus concerns. About $20 of a standard monthly cable bill can be attributed to paying for sports, which programmers such as Disney’s ESPN, AT&T’s Turner, Comcast’s NBC Universal and ViacomCBS’s CBS pay billions for each year.
In other words, Altice pays ESPN an affiliate fee – about $9 per month per subscriber, according to S&P Global estimates. If ESPN gives Altice a refund for the sports ESPN hasn’t provided, then Altice will happily give that money back to consumers. And then consumers will say, “wow! Altice credited me $20! Awesome! Way to go, Altice!”
adding my comment $9 to $10 for +. That does not make up for a long decline of subscribers. Disney + is the argument used for keeping ESPN +. I do not see where gambling would have been associated with Disney +. Now that Iger is in have the casino dreams stopped?
Is there a way to block ads on streaming services?
AdGuard has a fantastic record of blocking ads on most websites. Besides Hulu, it can block ads on Facebook, YouTube and many others. Available on Mac, Android, and iOS browsers, you can download it to try out, and it’s free for the first 14 days.
Seems a lot of people in a Google search hate Hulu ads.
It’s quite possible that the investor talk about ESPN was to point out how it has a distinct value…unlike the rest of Disney’s content which is on an ever downward slide. Nobody cares about any recent Star Wars or Marvel productions.
Those expensive to buy properties have very little continuing IP value, having been driven into the ground with really poor writing and indifferent direction. This is the real problem - old IP fading from memory, and newer material sucking. Thus a gradual long-term loss of the reasons (the IP) people would care to visit the parks. No one likes the new characters.
Seems like the Marvel franchise is still bringing in big bucks.
“Since the release of 2010′s “Iron Man 2”, Marvel has helped Disney rake in $22.5 billion at the global box office. In 2022 alone, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” brought in a combined $1.69 billion.”
Har. China just opened theaters to the next two Marvel films (for the first time), so there’s hundreds of millions more that wasn’t in the till before. For the record, Disney was the #1 studio for grosses (7th straight time) last year, with almost $4B from 16 releases.
OK, then. We know who’s not on the list to replace Iger after his two-year comeback.
It is true that ESPN stands “outside” what most think of as the core Disney properties, and therefore has an independent cash value that might be easily and immediately realized. Then again, so does ABC, except it plays into the “media outlet” for promotion of all other things Disney, like showings of older Disney properties on holiday nights, promotion of upcoming Disney events, etc. (National Geographic channel has a series on Disney’s Animal Kingdom which, while quite interesting, is nothing more than a series of one-hour infomercials for that park.)
[Little remembered fact: the first Disney TV show was called “Disneyland”, and it aired on ABC, because ABC needed programming, and agreed to provide the funding to build the park when no one else would. It was, of course, a weekly one-hour infomercial for Disneyland; priceless at the time to drum up interest in a not-yet-existing attraction. And it helped ABC convince other reluctant producers to work with them, back when NBC and CBS were the big dogs. Dumont and Metromedia never got Hollywood to play, and their networks never took off.]
There is already an ESPN/Wide World of Sports complex at Disney World. ESPN cruises with sports celebrities aboard Disney liners is another avenue. Others too, but yes, as a rule, it doesn’t have the multi-generational exploitation potential that Disney Princesses and parks do. Not everything has to (although it’s a bonus.)
Still, I believe it’s an integral part of getting Disney Streaming to the next level; look at how they’ve come from nothing to a strong #2 in just a couple years. Peacock and Paramount+ are afterthoughts by comparison.
There may come a day when it no longer makes sense under this corporate umbrella, but we’re not there now.
Is 2022 equal to 2019? This chart ends in 2021.
OK, then. We know who’s not on the list to replace Iger
Who?
And why speak this way? It’s unpleasant. Some people try decaf.
Of course not. The pandemic hammered every studio; for a time the theaters wee empty, even shut down. AMC almost went upside down until it was saved by meme-stockers on the interweb.
If you’re going to run your business forever as though the pandemic is forever, well, good luck. Lots of tech companies are finding out (and laying off) because they thought so. Other companies, particularly retail, entertainment, and event are finding their businesses booming. Disney is one of those.
You.
I’m sorry. Personal defect. I don’t suffer foolishness gladly. When people post something as inane as
… then I am likely to smack it down. These are characters which have been around for 80 years in some cases (Spider-Man), less in others, and they are headlining some of the biggest films in decades. Disney owns 8 of the Top 10 highest grossing movies of all time (including now, Avatar, which came with the purchase of Fox), and 6 of the next 10.
To misquote Yogi, that’s why everybody sees them, nobody likes the new characters. (Presumably that includes those in Avatar? Frozen? Avengers? Black Panther?)
If I recall, your career experience is in the radio / entertainment business so I can understand your depth of knowledge in this area. May I also ask if you are also a Disney investor? That might help folks here also better understand your position on Disney.
Thanks for sharing.
38Packard
The issue with the studios is how does getting movies very quickly out of the theaters and into DVD releases effect revenues?
A family rents a DVD it is not licensed by the seat.
There is a lot of cannibalizing at every move.
2022 compared to 2019 the net income is down about $8 billion.
Honestly kicking the tires I looked over the 5 year chart. It is very attractive. Then I looked at the PE ratio and thought 58? This could get really pretty at a lower price level. Then I saw there was no dividend. I would never touch this stock unless there was a dividend.
I have 400 shares of Disney left, a pittance of our portfolio and less than 10% of what we owned at one time. We used to have significant investment there, I keep those few because they are in my wife’s taxable account and when I cleared everything last (2008) I didn’t ditch some of the taxable stuff on her side.
It’s meaningless so far as any incentive I might have for posting on way or the other. All of it is, actually, but for Disney especially so.
Thanks for letting us know!
'38Packard
Uh, the same way it has for the last 30 years? Box office totals are just that: “box office” At the movie theater. That does not include DVD sales. Nor does it include other windows: video-on-demand (.eg. Amazon), pay cable (HBO), “free” cable (TNT), broadcast television (ABC), syndication television (WVLT-TV), exhibition, airlines & hotels, and yes, others. Studios may or may not use all the windows, depending on demand, packaging, etc. There are lots of permutations and combinations: VOD may have a 30 day “immediate” window, but others may buy a post-release VOD window for “after-30-days but up-to-6-months”. There may be a “free with ads (Hulu) encompassed within one of the “cable” windows, and there is often a second cable window for channels that didn’t get it in the first window (Showtime gets an exclusive window after HBO has run it.) Yes, there is even a 3rd cable window, but I’m getting lost in the weeds here.
IP exploitation is as much an art as science; some films translate into one but not the other (try selling an airplane disaster movie to the airlines, for an obvious instance) and some go straight to DVD because nobody really wants them - or the studio thinks it will make more that way.
Yes, all of Disney’s businesses got hammered by Covid, all except broadcast TV & cable. Theme parks, movie releases, Broadway, cruise lines - they all took it on the chin. Disney cut out its dividend in 2020 to preserve cash and the future. That’s one of the things Peltz wants, the dividend reinstated. It probably will be, but on the company’s timetable, not his.
Once they announce the dividend is back the stock will get up off the floor, but buying then will likely not be a better bargain than the day before. Problem is nobody here knows when that day will be (if ever.)
I’m not saying it’s a good deal now; I simply don’t know. It depends a lot on how quickly people return to theaters regularly as opposed to tentpole franchises, whether cruise lines fill up again, etc. That’s unknowable, at least to me. I’m just saying it’s a good business that’s been whacked; they did what they needed to do to survive what could have been a catastrophe, and I’ll just sit and watch - but defend what I see as an unfairly maligned management. (Not talking about Chapek, frankly he was there too short a time to know. His timing was bad, I’ll say that.)
As of recently, they (general cruise lines, not specifically disney) are back to full according to the reports I hear.
I suspect they will bring back the dividend in 2024 or 2025 assuming things get back to normal across their business segments. Meanwhile, their theme parks are so crowded, they have impose capacity constraints periodically. And it isn’t just the rides/attractions that have long lines, the shops and restaurants also do!
I’ve recently bought my first ever Disney shares a few weeks ago in the mid-80s. If it drops again, I will add to the position (a tiny position at the moment, I like scaling into things whenever possible).
That is the justification management has used, for several years, for the price increases: a scheme to limit demand by rationing capacity by ability to pay. Personally, I would prefer they build another park, to expand capacity. Of course, the path they have been on would be favored by beancounters: minimal CAPEX, and inflating margins.
Steve
Goofy you have more of the data at your finger tips but the DVD release schedules have been shortened during the pandemic. I get the idea you know that. It is cannibalism.
Disney probably is a good deal right now. And it might be a better deal later this year.
I want a dividend and the brand name Disney will never change that.
Sure but I wont get an advantage on yield. Disney is denying me that. What the company can do when they bring back to yield is lower it relative to the last time they offered a dividend. And they may feel they need to do just that. Dis is not inspiring my trust on the one thing that matters to me.