Walt Disney Co (DIS -0.04%) is one of the most famous companies in the world, but plenty of fans and investors don't know what Disney owns.
Almost everyone has had some kind of experience with a Disney product, whether that's watching a Disney movie, watching a show on one of its TV networks, or visiting a Disney theme park.
However, the company is much more than just its namesake brand. Today, Disney is a massive entertainment conglomerate, spanning movies, TV, theme parks, cruises, vacations, toys and other consumer products, and sports.
Since the 1990s, Disney has grown through a series of mergers and acquisitions. Historically, the company has justified those acquisitions by arguing that they will expand its distribution reach or its content library. Today, it has an arguably unmatched trove of intellectual property from both the Disney brand and the other companies it's acquired.
Current CEO Bob Iger has been the force behind many of Disney's acquisitions and has earned a reputation as a top Hollywood dealmaker. Let's take a look at some of the acquisitions he's done and earlier ones, as well.
Companies Disney owns
What companies does Disney own?
Disney today owns dozens of properties beyond those under the Disney brand.
The subsidiaries under its umbrella include:
1 - 5
1. Capital Cities/ABC (1996): 100% ownership
Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC in 1996 for $19 billion. At the time, it was the second-largest corporate takeover in history. ABC was the most profitable of the three major television networks at that time, and Disney management saw it as an opportunity to expand its distribution and accelerate its growth
2. ESPN (1996): 80% ownership
Disney also acquired ESPN in the Capital Cities/ABC deal, or an 80% stake in the sports entertainment giant. Hearst still owns the other 20%.
At the time of the deal, then-CEO Michael Eisner argued that the deal gave Disney control of the two premier family entertainment brands, Disney and ESPN.
3. Winnie the Pooh (2001): 100% ownership
Disney had originally acquired the rights to the Winnie the Pooh characters but had been paying royalties. The 2001 deal gave it the rights to the intellectual property for a lump sum payment of $350 million.
4. The Muppets (2004): 100% ownership
Disney had pursued The Muppets, a popular children's entertainment collection, for 14 years and finally acquired it in 2004 from the Jim Henson Company for $75 million. It also acquired the Bear in the Big Blue House property from the Henson Company at the same time.
5. Pixar (2006): 100% ownership
The Pixar acquisition was the first major deal under Iger, who led the $7.4 billion deal to gain control of the highly respected animation studio. The move also gave Disney a new pool of creative and technical talent to tap for both Pixar movies and Disney's own animated content.
6 - 10
6. Marvel (2009): 100% ownership
Marvel is arguably Disney's most successful acquisition to date. The deal gave Disney substantial intellectual property that it has parlayed into dozens of Marvel Comics Universe, many of which have been blockbusters. Disney paid $4 billion for the comic book empire. Marvel had filed for bankruptcy in 1996 as comic books started to collapse, and it had recently launched Marvel Studios before Disney bought it.
7. Lucasfilm (2012): 100% ownership
Lucasfilm is best known as the parent of Star Wars and related intellectual property. Disney acquired the business from George Lucas for $4.05 billion in 2012. As with Marvel, the company has leveraged those assets into several new movies. Although the reviews have been mixed, the box office tally shows that the deal has been a successful one for Disney.
8. BAMTech (2015): 100% ownership
Disney acquired the streaming tech platform in stages since the company was owned in a joint venture between Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. Disney started acquiring it in 2015, but didn't own the entire platform until 2022. The technology has been crucial in the development of Disney's own streaming services, including Disney+.
9. Fox Entertainment Assets (2018): 100% ownership
Disney's biggest acquisition to date is its 2018 deal to acquire Fox's entertainment assets for $52.4 billion, or $71.3 billion, including the assumption of debt. The deal included several cable channels, such as FX and National Geographic, as well as the 20th Century Studio and other Fox-owned studios, such as Searchlight. It also gave Disney a large quantity of new content to leverage in its streaming services like The Simpsons and Avatar, which it intends to use to make a Star Wars-like string of sequels.
The deal also gave Disney another chunk of Hulu. Since buying Fox, some have speculated that Disney overpaid for the deal since it's still losing money on streaming, and Disney stock has struggled since the move.
10. Hulu (2019): 67% ownership
The Hulu streaming service began as a joint venture between Disney, Comcast (CMCSA 1.85%), and Fox Corp. (FOX -1.5%), each owning a third. In 2016, Time Warner acquired 10% of the company, leaving Disney with 30%. In the Fox deal, Disney gained Fox's 30% share, and WarnerMedia, then owned by AT&T (T 1.02%), sold its stake back to Hulu, leaving Disney with 67%.
Disney has agreed to buy Comcast's stake for $8.6 billion as part of an agreement in 2019, although the deal had not closed as of January 2024.
Disney will have full control of Hulu after the purchase from Comcast closes.
What it could buy in the future
What could Disney buy in the future?
At this stage, Disney seems more focused on monetizing or even divesting its existing assets instead of shopping for new ones.
Iger has referred to linear media properties like ABC as "non-core," implying he might be willing to sell them, and he's interested in a partner for ESPN.
According to media reports, ESPN is in advanced talks with the NFL about a deal that would give the NFL a stake in ESPN in exchange for ESPN taking control of NFL Media, which includes the NFL Network.
Disney could pursue more entertainment assets since there's a clear pattern to its acquisition strategy. The company, however, took on substantial debt for the Fox acquisition. The debt taken on to buy Fox explains why it hasn't made a major purchase since then (with the exception of the Hulu deal, which is effectively an extension of the Fox acquisition).
It wouldn't be surprising to see Disney buy other studios or brands with good intellectual property. A video game publisher could also make sense for Disney, expanding its entertainment universe and giving it new intellectual property to use for its theme parks. Similarly, a bid for a toymaker like Mattel (MAT -0.6%) or Hasbro (HAS -0.77%) seems possible, especially since Mattel recently launched its own movie studio, which released the blockbuster Barbie.
However, recent remarks from management indicate it still has plenty of intellectual property that it has yet to monetize, including creating worlds based on Frozen and Black Panther for its theme parks, so it may be a few years before we see another significant acquisition from the company.
Still, that's not a bad thing for investors.
Related investing topics
The bottom line on companies Disney owns
Disney has grown over its history from its namesake brand known for children's animation and theme parks to an entertainment colossus that has an unmatched library of intellectual property and continues to generate profits for the company through its flywheel business model that includes video entertainment, consumer products like toys, and theme parks and other vacations. Those all cater to the same customers, creating a unique brand affinity.
Disney's acquisitions, such as Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox, have helped make its strategy a success, but it also hasn't made the company immune to the tech-driven disruption in the media industry.
The television ecosystem is shrinking, and to satisfy shareholders, Disney will have to find a replacement for that cash cow with its streaming services. It should get there eventually, but it's proven more challenging than many shareholders and even Iger himself have expected.
FAQ
Disney stock FAQ
Will Apple buy Disney?
Speculation has swirled for years about Apple potentially acquiring Disney, but such a deal is unlikely to happen.
While Apple has enough cash to buy Disney, the tech giant rarely makes acquisitions, and the rationale for acquiring Disney isn't clear, especially since Disney is in the middle of transitioning from television to streaming.
Presumably, the argument is that Disney would make Apple an entertainment powerhouse, but that's outside of Apple's core competency, which revolves around consumer tech devices like the iPhone. Getting into entertainment doesn't seem to offer much of a strategic benefit. Although Apple has its own streaming service, it functions more as a supplement to its core business or an additional incentive to buy its devices, rather than a core offering.
Given that, acquiring Disney would do little to help Apple's principal business selling devices and the services that go with them.
Will Disney buy DC?
DC Comics, the home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and other comic book heroes, may seem like a logical acquisition for Disney.
The company has proven itself as a master at leveraging comic book material into movies through the success of the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU).
Like a sale to Apple, such a deal has long been the subject of scuttlebutt, but there haven't been any serious indications that Disney would make such a move.
Doing so might be redundant since Disney already has significant comic book property, and there's also no indication that Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) is interested in selling the DC franchise. Additionally, there are some signs of fatigue for comic book movies; recent MCU releases have performed poorly at the box office.
If Disney decides to take out its checkbook again, DC Comics is a possible target, but given Disney's debt burden and current strategic focus on monetizing its existing intellectual property, such a deal doesn't seem likely in the near term.
Will Disney buy Sony?
As with DC Comics, plenty of industry observers have also posited that Disney could take over Sony Group (NYSE:SONY), which owns the rights to Marvel's best-known character, Spider-Man.
However, buying a $120 billion company for one comic book character doesn't make sense. Sony also owns production studios, including Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures, as well as the PlayStation video game ecosystem, but Sony's current market cap still far exceeds what Disney paid for Fox.
If Disney had not acquired Fox, a deal for Sony might have made sense, but the current price for Sony makes it unjustifiable, and Disney doesn't have the same content needs that it did before the Fox deal.
In 2021, Disney made a deal with Sony to bring some Spider-Man movies and other titles to its streaming services, which also would seem to obviate the need for an all-out acquisition of Sony.
