It’s been over 18 months since Disney first introduced the Hulu hub into Disney+ in the United States, with the sports hub, ESPN, being added last December.

The addition of both of these hubs, introduced a wide selection of general entertainment and sports content into Disney+, while boosting up the Disney Streaming Bundle, as having all three would give subscribers the best of everything.

During today’s quarterly financial results investor call, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger was asked about the benefits of bringing Hulu and ESPN content into Disney+, such as helping increase sign-ups, reducing churn and improving engagement.  

To answer your question specifically, the presence of Hulu embedded in Disney basically from a user experience perspective and the addition of sports content is definitely having an impact, definitely having a positive impact. Not only is engagement up, but churn is down and significantly. And as we look ahead, it’s obviously our desire and in fact, we’re optimistic about being able to execute against it to turn the streaming business into a true growth business.

And as we see it, there are three ways to do it. One is, what we’ve just talked about, which is to continue to put Disney+ and Hulu together as a user experience. You’ll see more of that in the months ahead.

In addition, we plan when we launched ESPN direct-to-consumer to be really smart about bundling that. And for those that bundle, the experience will be fully integrated, that will be another big step.

So when you consider the Disney brands that are part of Disney+, the general entertainment that’s part of Hulu and the volume, and then the live sports that will be part of the experience. In a way, there’s nothing like it in the streaming world. It’s unrivaled in terms of quality, in terms of volume and just in terms of variety. We’re very excited about it.

For the past few years, there has been much speculation about Disney+ and Hulu eventually merging together, but it hasn’t been able to do so until it finalises its deal with Comcast to obtain full ownership of Hulu, bringing Disney+ more in line with the rest of the world, where everything is found in one single app.

Bob Iger also explained how else they are going to try to improve the Disney+ experience for users, as it’s been very noticeable that Disney+ is far behind other streaming services like YouTube and Netflix, in terms of technology.

Two other pillars of growth for that business will be technology. We’re also hard at work in improving our basically the tech side of that business. We’ve taken a lot of steps already, including paid — including paid sharing, which we’re just kicking in with Hulu that’s also starting to work. A lot more in terms of personalization and customization, a lot on the ad-tech side and much more coming. I was just taken through a roadmap for the rest of the year. So we’re not talking about many years. We’re talking about near-term where the technology improvements to the platforms will be significant.

One of the key aspects of growth for Disney+ is in expanding its reach around the world, and Bob Iger explained how they are planning on building Disney+ as a global platform.

The third pillar of growth will be investment in content, particularly outside the United States where we know that we need to invest more in local content and we’ve already started that process. It takes time and we don’t really end up booking those costs until the shows air, but we’re already starting to develop more aggressively in markets — in very, very targeted markets outside the United States.

Roger’s Take: I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Disney uses the launch of the new ESPN Flagship product as a reset point for its streaming bundle, merging together Disney+ and Hulu into one platform, with some free ESPN content, but the bundle will likely become a simplified version of Disney+ along with ESPN Flagship, since having too many options is going to cause problems.  There’s zero need to have ESPN+ and ESPN Flagship, in addition to a free basic tier.  It might not happen right away, but with every other major streaming service offering everything under one simple subscription, we could see some major changes in the future.

I also think that Disney focusing on a couple of core apps will also result in them being able to keep improving the technology and overall user experience, rather than managing multiple apps.

What do you think of the Disney+ and Hulu bundle?   Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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