Disney

Disney is one of those beautiful pieces of American history. There is so much passion behind the brand name. Children and adults have all gone there. 

The story of Bob Iger's media deals

The king is back on his throne. This time Iger is stepping up for two years to turn Disney around. He was instrumental in the company's three transformational acquisitions: Marvel, Lucasfilms and Pixar. Each were amazing deals. They created billions of dollars in value each.

But now he's well rested and back. This time he's going big into streaming. This will be a gamechanger for the media landscape. You see, in the past, Netflix and Hulu dominated streaming. Then Amazon Prime entered. Then the rest of the media conglomerates. But that didn't last for long.

Media has always been a two-sided problem. To be successful, you need content and distribution. During the movie theater era it was clear who owned distribution. Than DVDs came out. The profit model changed as margins got stickier and continued to scale. Netflix was the benefactor of this inflection point. However what happened next was unexpected...

Disney entered streaming with force. Before Disney focused on other revenue streams like royalties, shows and theme parks. The intangible value was the company's IP like Mickey Mouse and Goofy. But the competition overlooked Disney's true competitive advantage.

Bob Iger spent two decades buying the absolute best content libraries and reinvested in them, heavily. So now Disney has diversity in content (from the Disney Channel to the Marvel Universe). They can target a very broad audience. And they live deep in the minds of consumers. Everyone can recognize America's favorite mouse.

Combine that with cheap cloud computing and you can build an amazing streaming service. Which is exactly what Disney did with Disney+. Now the company has an ever-expanding content library, cheaper distribution than movie theaters and control the customer conversation. So with Iger back on the map, I think Disney will dominate the streaming industry this decade.