Twenty years ago, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Marvel Studios were all separate entities. Now, they’re all owned by Disney. Disney also bought 20th Century Fox, a major movie studio that was independent for decades. Warner Bros. and Discovery, two enormous media companies, merged in 2022. More and more, it seems that the entertainment industry is consolidating. In a few years there will be, like, four companies total operating in it.
And that future may be coming sooner than we think. For a while now, there has been talk among business folk that Apple, one of the most successful technology companies in the world, might buy Disney, one of the most successful entertainment companies.
It seems mind-boggling to think that any company could be big enough to buy Disney, which is collossally huge itself. But Apple is big enough to pull it off, especially if Disney slims down a bit.
Why are people saying that Apple might buy Disney?
A lot of the current talk about Apple buying Disney has been set off by comments that Disney CEO Bob Iger made to CNBC in July about some of the linear TV channels that Disney owns, including ABC, not being “core” to the company’s business anymore. “Transformative work is dealing with businesses that are no-growth businesses and what to do about them, and particularly the linear business, which we are expansive in our thinking about,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Things heated up earlier this week when Tom Carter, a former executive at Nexstar, told a Bank of America conference that if Disney’s ABC stations become available, Nexstar would be able to buy them with “little friction…We think there could be some opportunities depending on how things fall out.” Nexstar previously bought The CW from Warner Bros. and CBS, so clearly they’re in the market for TV channels.
And Disney isn’t denying that something may be going on, saying in a statement on Thursday that it is “open to considering a variety of strategic options for our linear businesses.” It denied it was in active discussions to sell ABC, but there seems to be a lot of smoke here.
So what does Disney selling off ABC have to do with possibly getting purchased by Apple? Well, Disney would reduce its size, meaning it would lower its price for a potential buyer. It would also be easier for such a huge deal to pass regulatory muster. Government regulators are wary of companies becoming too big for fear of monopolies forming, and would look with suspicion on two enormous companies like Apple and Disney coming together. But if Disney were smaller, it wouldn’t be as big a deal.
“I don’t think would buy the company as it presently exists,” one veteran Hollywood executive told THR. “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.”
The close relationship between Apple and Disney
Again, it’s kind of crazy to think of anyone buying Disney, but Disney and Apple have had a close relationship for a while. Apple founder Steve Jobs was on the board at Disney from 2006 until his death in 2011. Disney CEO Bob Iger joined Apple’s board shortly after Jobs died. He left in 2019, the same day that Apple announced it would be making the Apple TV+ streaming service, which competes with Disney+. It might be weird to be on the board of a competing company, but that’s not a problem if the companies merge.
Also, in his 2019 autobiography The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger outright said that he thinks Disney and Apple may have merged had Jobs not passed away in 2011. “I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies, or at least discussed the possibility very seriously,” he wrote. Iger has also distributed copies of the book Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words to Disney employees. And he’s appeared onstage touting Apple’s Vision Pro goggles. Clearly, he’s a fan.
So is Apple actually going to buy Disney? We don’t know, but there are a lot of curious synchronicities happening here. Best keep an eye on it.
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