Wednesday, August 9, 2023 10:10 am5 Comments

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The rumors of Apple buying Disney have been circulating for years, with many analysts and investors believing that it would be a match made in heaven. Both companies are leaders in their respective industries, and a merger would create a media and technology powerhouse with unmatched reach and scale. No, there’s talk of Apple buying parts of Disney as The House of Mouse undergoes myriad struggles.

Kim Masters and Alex Weprin for The Hollywood Reporter
:

few weeks before Bob Iger sat down for that CNBC interview in which he said Disney’s linear TV networks, like ABC and FX, “may not be core” to the company’s business, a veteran Hollywood executive mused to THR on the possibility of a deal that would rock the industry: Apple buying Disney. It’s an idea that keeps being discussed, even though many top executives have scoffed at it and many still do. Apple doesn’t want to buy a studio, they say, and there’s no way the feds would allow a huge deal like that to go through.

But this observer wasn’t so quick to rule it out. “I don’t think [Apple] would buy the company as it presently exists,” he said. “But if you see Bob start to divest things … that feels like he’s prepping for a sale. And there’s clearly no buyer like Apple.”

Not long after that, Iger went on television and hung a possibly-for-sale sign on Disney’s TV businesses. And just like that, it was a little more possible to see the outlines of a slimmed-down Disney that could be a tempting acquisition target.

There clearly is no buyer like Apple, which is sitting on $62 billion in cash and cash equivalents and has a $2.8 trillion market cap. And while it may be very true that Apple doesn’t want to buy a studio, maybe it would want to buy this studio — Iger the one that, despite the challenges of the moment, has a vault full of priceless IP and remains the most valuable brand in entertainment.

Some Hollywood executives have been anticipating a future in which the studio herd will continue to thin — dramatically. “There will end up being three or four platforms and everybody else gets hollowed out and acquired,” says one industry veteran. “There will be Apple, Amazon, Netflix and one other. If you could put NBCUniversal, Warners and Paramount together, you probably have enough to survive.”

MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, the idea of Apple buying Disney is not a new idea. It’s been bandied about for years. But, Apple buying select parts of Disney might make more sense (and pass regulatory hurdles).

In December 2021, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s David Faber that while he never spoke with Steve Jobs about a potential merger of Apple and Disney, but he believes the deal likely would have “gotten there” had Jobs lived longer.

As we wrote back in March 2020:

Well, now, such an acquisition would certainly jibe with some whispers we’d heard [in November 2019] prior to the coronavirus outbreak of a major Apple acquisition possibly being in the works.

Such an acquisition would of course be quite an undertaking as Apple would have to bring the parts of Disney that are unique (think theme parks) into the fold (or keep them as an Apple subsidiary). On the positive side, Apple TV+ would immediately become a massive streaming entity as Disney+ content rolled into Apple’s streaming service would be an instant juggernaut.

See also:
• Downsizing Disney looks to unload its TV assets; Apple may be eyeing ESPN – July 17, 2023
• Apple should buy Disney to feed Vision Pro – analyst – June 7, 2023
• Disney+ loses another 4 million subscribers; share price plummets – May 11, 2023
• Disney CEO Bob Iger remembers Steve Jobs: ‘We felt we could say anything to each other’ – September 18, 2019
• Disney CEO Bob Iger kept Steve Jobs’s cancer a secret for three years – March 20, 2015

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