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Disney Lowers Content Spending Estimate by $1 Billion This Year

As Wall Street parses its earnings beat and stagnate streaming subscriber growth, the company revises its spending expectation from $24 billion to $23 billion for produced and licensed content, as well as sports rights.

The Wall Street analysts’ research notes reflected measured takes on the fiscal quarter, with report titles like “Smooth Seas Ahead?,” “Checking the Right Boxes,” “Winter Soldier and “Cruising to start the year.” While “it is expected to be an investment year, we believe that there will be some discretion around the magnitude of spend, and the [Disney+] platform should benefit from a password-sharing crackdown, recent price increases and strong advertising,” a Bank of America team led by Jessica Reif Ehrlich wrote. The attention paid on the earnings call on the direct-to-consumer front was focused on the launch of the flagship ESPN streaming service, which will arrive before the end of the year.

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