While the rest of America was doing its last-minute turkey shopping, the Walt Disney Co. was taking out the trash.
On Wednesday, Disney revealed in an SEC filing that it had suffered major subscriber losses across all its U.S. cable networks. ESPN reported just 92 million customers in 2015 — a loss of 7 million since 2013. On Monday, Disney stock dropped $1.62 per share.
Those lost subscribers reflect a trend across cable, where most ad-supported networks have been hit by similar declines. But the reverse has been true in streaming video, where subscription services have experienced major growth.
The biggest streaming company of all, Netflix, has a long way to go before it catches ESPN, the most profitable of all cable networks ($6.61