I joined The Close on Bloomberg News to slice the cheese from Disney’s 2Q Earnings:
🐭 We focused on Disney Streaming — for good reason. Disney’s D2C Streaming profits more than doubled: up 116% to $712B in 2Q.
🐭 I also unpack and explain the deal Disney announced yesterday with TikTok:
TikTok is integrating into Disney+ with a curated feed of Creators and much of the content focused on Disney IP. Importantly, Disney will package and sell this ad inventory across BOTH Disney Streaming and TikTok - something that will be popular with Creators and Advertisers.
🐭 This move allows Disney to begin to compete with social platforms, on mobile, outside the living room. It is also another shoe dropping in the verticalization of Premium Television. As I told Romaine, this is more than Brands Cosplaying Creator, it's a careful and 1000% necessary move into mobile.
🐭 I mention the success of Toy Story in the interview. Here are the receipts:
Toy Story 5: $1B+ at the global BO; Toy Story catalog: 2B hours streamed this summer; Toy Story Merch: $1.1B in sales this year; Toy Story drove a +20% jump in OpInc at Disney Parks & Experiences. Walt’s Flywheel in action.
🐭 I also dug into Disney’s Sports game. OpInc at ESPN and Sports fell -17% in 2Q. That’s because their NBA fees skyrocketed 86%. Disney’s sports fees (alone) are $12B in 2026 - that’s 60% of Netflix’s entire 2026 programming spend. That said: the NBA Finals rose 100% this year, with viewing among P12-24 up 140%. The NHL Finals also grew 100% this year. So the Sports bet is starting to pay off.
🐭 The question is, can Josh D’Amaro and Disney transform ESPN into a streaming service faster than Trad TV dies? Otherwise, even the Knicks may not be able to make the sports math work.
Some Disney things we didn’t cover on Bloomberg:
🐭 Overall Net Income at Disney fell -52% in 2Q: This stems from their sale of their half of A+E Global Media to Hearst - taking a $900 million write down on value in the process.
🐭 Disney has finally started to improve their position in the FOX acquisition seven years ago: Because of the full integration of Hulu and FOX content (The Simpsons, X Men) into the Disney Universe, they’ve moved from -$67 BILLION negative asset value to approximately -$40 BILLION.
🐭 Still, at this rate, Disney won’t break even on the FOX acquisition until 2034.
🐭 Disney shares are up 5% this week.
Let me know your thoughts on all that.
Cheers.
ESHAP
