The Walt Disney Company today announced they have closed their transaction to combine Fubo’s business with Disney’s Hulu + Live TV business.

Disney now holds 70% interest in the newly combined company with existing Fubo shareholders holding an approximately 30% interest.

Fubo’s existing management team, led by Fubo Co-founder and CEO David Gandler, will operate the newly combined Fubo and Hulu + Live TV businesses.

Fubo and Hulu + Live TV will continue to be available to consumers as separate and distinct services, each offering consumers multiple plan options from skinny to robust at compelling price points. Hulu + Live TV will continue to be streamed in the Hulu app and offered as part of an entertainment-focused bundle with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN Unlimited. Fubo will continue to serve viewers in the Fubo app.

The acquisition of Fubo is a sign that, as consumers seek more value for the content they stream, streaming services are more likely to continue to consolidate. Although virtual MVPD’s like Disney’s Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV and Fubo TV (whose specialty is sports), have become more popular in recent years, the costs involved in running them have been too high for these companies.

The newly combined Fubo and Hulu + Live TV business makes it the sixth largest pay TV company in the U.S. with nearly 6 million subscribers in North America and the second largest vMPVD after YouTube TV. The combined company will offer more than 55,000 live sporting events, and entertainment-focused programming offerings from Fubo and Hulu + Live TV.

The acquisition also allows Disney to strengthen its position as a juggernaut in live sports, with its ability to combine viewership from Fubo with its soon to be launched ESPN DTV streaming service.

Disney will also combine its marketing and sales teams for both services and says it will have more flexibility to optimize advertising efforts and offer more streaming packages, including the increasingly popular “skinny bundles. Disney says the combined company will have access to a $145 million term loan that it has dedicated to provide Fubo in 2026 as part of the transaction.

Sterlington PLLC advised Fubo’s management team in the deal.  The Sterlington team was led by Executive Compensation partners Jeremy L. Goldstein and Kristy Fields, who specialize in advising senior executives and management teams in complex corporate transactions.

Fubo will discuss the transaction on its third quarter 2025 investor conference call on Monday, Nov. 3 at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Google has announced another rate increase for its YouTube TV service, effective Jan. 13, 2025. In its sixth such hike, the service will now cost subscribers $82.99, a $10 increase since the last jump in 2023.

The service, which launched in 2017 for $35 per month, is now the most expensive virtual MVPD in the U.S., surpassing Hulu Live+, which goes for $75.99 per month; DirecTV, whose streaming platform starts at $74.99 per month; and Sling TV, at $40 monthly.

YouTube TV’s monthly subscription is now 137% higher than its initial monthly rate. It cited higher content costs and investments as reasons for the increase.

“To keep up with the rising cost of content and the investments we make in the quality of our service, we’re updating our monthly price from $72.99/month to $82.99/month starting January 13, 2025,” the company told subscribers in an email today. “We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we realize this has an impact on our members. We are committed to bringing you features that are changing the way we watch live TV, like unlimited DVR storage and multiview, and supporting YouTube TV’s breadth of content and vast on-demand library of movies and shows.”

‌“We hope YouTube TV continues to be your service of choice, but we understand that some of our members may want to cancel their subscriptions,“ the email continued. “As always, family managers have the ability to pause or cancel anytime.”

NEW YORK—Reported pay-TV numbers among some of the biggest providers—Comcast, AT&T, Charter Communications and Verizon; Dish Network and Atlice USA are still unreported—in the fourth quarter of 2019 were not strong. However, growth among virtual MVPDs, specifically Hulu Live and YouTube TV, helped reduce some of those loses, per a new report from MoffetNathanson.

In the report “U.S. Media: Get Those Life Boats Ready,” it is shown that the four aforementioned pay-TV providers lost nearly 1.5 million subscribers combined in Q4 2019; AT&T lost 907,000 subscribers by itself.

Yet, while the report’s author, Michael Nathanson, said he did not have enough data for precise numbers for Hulu Live and YouTube TV in Q4 2019, the research says they experienced “exceptionally strong” growth. With their addition, pay-TV’s recession in that quarter would improve from the record -6.8% to -3.5%.

TVT’s sister publication B&C has the full story.