After more than two years of haggling, Disney has finally closed its deal with Comcast to buy out NBCUniversal‘s one-third stake in Hulu — and Disney is paying much less than it would have if NBCU had its druthers.
In December 2023, in an initial payment toward the Hulu buyout, Disney agreed to pay $8.61 billion to Comcast. That represented one-third of the $27.5 billion guaranteed floor value for Hulu that was set when the companies entered into their agreement in 2019.
The two sides last year entered into arbitration to determine the final price tag. Now, that number has been calculated: Pursuant to the contractual appraisal process that was completed on June 9, 2025, an additional $438.7 million is payable by Disney to NBCU to purchase NBCU’s interest in Hulu, according to a Disney SEC filing Monday. The acquisition of NBCU’s interest in Hulu will close on or before July 24, 2025, per the filing.
The total price Disney will have paid for Hulu is approximately $9 billion, implying a valuation of $27 billion overall for the streaming company. If the price had been determined by the bank hired by Comcast to assess the value the Hulu stake, that would have resulted in an additional $5 billion payable by Disney.
“We are pleased this is finally resolved. We have had a productive partnership with NBCUniversal, and we wish them the best of luck,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. “Completing the Hulu acquisition paves the way for a deeper and more seamless integration of Hulu’s general entertainment content with Disney+ and, soon, with ESPN’s direct-to-consumer product, providing an unrivaled value proposition for consumers.”
A Comcast spokesperson said in a statement, “Hulu was a great start for us in streaming that generated nearly $10 billion in proceeds for Comcast and created an important audience for NBCUniversal’s world-class content. We wish Disney well with Hulu and appreciate the cooperative way our teams managed the partnership.”
Formed in 2007, Hulu was born as a joint venture between NBCUniversal and Fox — initially to fight against YouTube — with Disney later acquiring a piece of the company along with others. In 2019, Disney had secured two-thirds ownership of Hulu, after it acquired the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox for $71 billion and AT&T sold WarnerMedia’s 10% stake back to the remaining Hulu shareholders.
Disney was actively looking for a path to own 100% of Hulu in talks with Comcast. In May 2019, the company unveiled a deal under which Disney assumed full operational control of Hulu; at the time, Comcast had agreed to sell its stake in Hulu within five years.
In May 2024, Disney and NBCU entered into a “confidential arbitration” to resolve the dispute over the appraisal process to determine the fair value of Hulu “in which the parties seek declaratory relief, equitable relief and unspecified damages,” according to an earlier Disney regulatory filing. Per the companies’ agreement, if the two sides’ valuations were not within 10% of each other, the banks they enlisted for the transaction would pick a third firm to make another estimate, and Hulu’s final valuation will be the average of the two figures that are closest to each other.
Unsurprisingly, the valuations arrived at by the Disney and Comcast camps were very different. During the initial phase of the appraisal process, Disney’s appraiser arrived at a valuation below the guaranteed floor value, while NBCU’s appraiser arrived at a valuation “substantially in excess of the guaranteed floor value,” according to Disney’s filing. The “final equity fair value” takes into account the valuation of that third appraiser, as noted by Disney’s June 9 filing.
