BAM! Who moved Netflix’s cheese?

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings celebrated the monumental achievement of hitting 100 million subscribers last quarter by eating a steak alone at Denny’s. Little did he realize then that Disney’s Bob Iger wanted a piece of that same steak!

Walt Disney and its ringleader shocked the binge-watching Netflixers with the proclamation that it’s ending the exclusive content deal and to be ready to download another app to the already crowded mobile screens.

Wall St. and indeed Walt Disney itself was not happy with the dwindling fortunes at ESPN as we reported last quarter and was increasingly getting wary of content aggregators taking away their fair share of revenues.

Bob Iger, in the conference call, said: “the future of this industry will be forged by direct relationships between content creators and consumers.”

Sensing the fundamental shift in media consumption, Disney accelerated the majority acquisition of streaming-tech provider BAMTech (originally set up by Major League Baseball) and announced earlier than anticipated 2018 launch of ESPN streaming service with up to 10k sporting events.

And beginning 2019, all of Disney’s past titles and future releases like Frozen 2, Toy Story 4 will be available only on their yet to be launched streaming service.

With Netflix announcing comics publisher Millarworld’s acquisition just a day prior to this big move from Disney, the streaming wars have just begun! The only question is, where does this leave the bleeding allies — Comcast and DirecTV.

This was published as part of AlphaNews newsletter. Subscribe to it here to get more such stories.

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Radhakrishnan Chonat

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Aspiring Geek. Value Investor. Undercover Economist. News Junkie. Jovial. Loves reading Annual Reports. Product Manager @ Fintech Startup AlphaStreet

AlphaNews

AlphaNews

Do you feel that Wall Street advisors purposefully talk in a language to justify their fees? Then you are at the right place. We cut through the jargon and complexity, giving you the market happenings in a way they should have.

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