Will Disney and ESPN Consciously Uncouple?

Disney ESPN
Photo by Matt Stroshane/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
October 15, 2021

During his extraordinary tenure as C.E.O. of The Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger methodically and dexterously transformed the organization from a single brand to a brand of brands, stringing together an M&A trophy shelf perhaps unparalleled in modern media history: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and, in the final years of his tenure, the majority assets of 21st Century Fox. In sum, the accumulation of these extraordinary creative companies positioned a bulked-up Disney to enter the streaming business in a full-throated, double-barreled manner. It took Reed Hastings ten years to get Netflix to one hundred million subscribers. Disney+ achieved that feat in a year-and-a-half, and it continues to gain on Netflix every quarter.