Disney will combine its Hulu and Disney+ streaming services into a single app by the end of this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger said on Wednesday during Disney’s Q2 earnings call. The Mouse House also announced that it is raising the price of its Disney+ ad-free streaming tier later in the year. (via TechCrunch).
The company also plans to keep Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ as standalone platforms. A combined app will be first provided to Disney+/Hulu bundle subscribers. This will allow subscribers to access all of the content on the two services without the need to swap back and forth between two separate apps.
“The integrated app experience that we announced today is for consumers that have subscribed to both services for now,” said Iger. He explained that Disney is taking the two-app bundle and combining it into one experience that will have “basically more content than it offered before.”
With the merging of the services, Disney plans to increase pricing. “We plan to set a higher price for our ad-free tier later this year,” Iger said.
The announcement appears to support previous reports that Disney will purchase Comcast’s stake in Hulu by 2024. Currently, Comcast owns 33% and Disney owns 66%.
The announcement came as the Disney+ service lost four million subscribers during the second fiscal quarter of 2023. Hulu gained 200,000 subs during the same timeframe.
