Disney+, Hulu & ESPN Drive Increase In Revenue
Disney has announced its latest quarterly financial results for the first quarter of 2026, which covers the period from October through to December 2025, giving us an insight into how Disney+ and its other streaming businesses are performing.
Unfortunately, Disney has followed Netflix’s lead, and this is the first quarterly results, where Disney hasn’t provided details on how many subscribers it has to Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. Though Disney will apparently give some updates whenever they reach an important milestone,
So we will no longer be able to get a clear look into how well Disney+ is doing in terms of subscribers, but we will still get to see a breakdown of how the streaming division is performing financially.
According to the latest report, Disney’s streaming division, which includes Disney+ and Hulu, was able to make more revenue, pulling in $4,424 billion in the last quarter, up 13% on the same time last year, and the advertising revenue within the streaming division, was also up 4% to $922 million.
The company had a great quarter at the box office, with the release of “Zootopia 2” and “Avatar: Fire And Ash”. However, the company also spent money on acquiring a stake in the Fubo TV streaming platform, which offset some of the gains.
Disney’s CEO Bob Iger also said in a statement regarding the latest financial results:
“We are pleased with the start to our fiscal year, and our achievements reflect the tremendous progress we’ve made. We delivered strong box office performance in calendar year 2025 with billion-dollar hits like Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash, franchises that generate value across many of our businesses. As we continue to manage our company for the future, I am incredibly proud of all that we’ve accomplished over the past three years.”
There were also some comments from the Disney executives regarding the success of Disney+ and Hulu:
Our creative success extends beyond our films. Seven of the Top 10 most-watched shows of 2025 streamed on Disney+ or Hulu, as reported by Nielsen1, and Bluey was the most-streamed show in the U.S. for the second year in a row, with 45 billion minutes watched2. ABC had the top 6 shows for Adults 18-49 in calendar year 2025, including High Potential, Abbott Elementary, and Dancing with the Stars. Marvel’s Wonder Man premiered last week to rave reviews, and Taylor Swift returned to Disney+ to complete her phenomenal Eras Tour run with The End of an Era docuseries and the concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show. And we’re excited to bring audiences American Love Story, Season 2 of Paradise, the long-awaited revival of Scrubs, Season 4 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again in the coming months.
There was also further commitment to more investment in international originals for Disney+.
We are focused on the international growth opportunity for our streaming services and are seeing encouraging results from our investment in local content. In the quarter, engagement was supported by standout local originals such as The Manipulated in APAC and Hija del Fuego in LATAM, content agreements with free-to-air broadcasters to increase our depth of local content, and regionally relevant sports such as the NBA in Australia. And we recently took home three international Emmys in top categories for Rivals, Bluey, and Yo, Adicto.
Late last year, Disney+ rolled out a brand new homepage and other technical alterations to the app, to encourage more usage and better discoverability of content within the app, which the executives also addressed:
We’re rolling out numerous product enhancements to elevate the user experience on Disney+, advancing
work to improve our recommendation engine, and exploring opportunities to use AI to further increase
personalization. Our refreshed Disney+ homepage, which launched in the fall, features streamlined
navigation, a dedicated “For You” section, and a more modern, intuitive design, with additional updates in
the works.
It was also revealed late last year that Disney was planning on incorporating AI-created shorts onto the platform, which was also addressed by the executives.
Ongoing experimentation remains central to how we innovate, and we expect new ad tech capabilities such as our AI-powered planning tool and video generator to improve advertiser engagement. We’re also layering in additional ways to engage audiences by developing new vertical and shortform experiences, and we plan to introduce a curated slate of Sora-generated content on Disney+ following our recently announced licensing agreement with OpenAI. Together, these efforts are shaping a more personalized streaming experience and positioning us to deliver greater value to consumers and revenue, profit, and margin growth over time
Roger’s Take: It’s very clear that Disney has been able to successfully move its streaming business to profitability, but its still got a long way to go until it can replace the linear income. This is also why we’ve seen so many changes with Disney’s streaming strategy in the past few years, to get to this point. Ultimately, the future for Disney is streaming, and it still has some way to go until it sorts out what its future plans are for Hulu, which will see it incorporated into Disney+ in the US, like it already is internationally, and likely more integration with Fubo.
I’m still not sure incorporating AI-created shorts into Disney+ is a great idea, but at the end of the day, if subscribers watch it, they will continue to grow this area of content up; if the audience rejects it, Disney will abandon the idea too.
What do you think of these results? Let me know on social media!
