Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, has announced massive cuts in the company with the intention of cutting costs and reorganizing the company.
A total of 7,000 people will be fired from Disney with the intention of saving about 5,500 million dollars, explains Iger during the presentation of quarterly results.
Bob Iger returned as CEO of the company in November 2022, after handing over to Bob Chapek in early 2020.
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The layoffs are not new. Disney employees were already preparing for it. In November, Bob Chapek already warned staff that the company would “look through all avenues of operations and labor to find savings, and we anticipate some staff reductions as part of this review”.
Internally, there was speculation that employees working on non-premium digital products were among those laid off, according to a company insider.
Iger has also announced a reorganization of the company that will stand on 3 main legs:
- Disney Entertainment: streaming platforms, movie studios and other segments. It will be led by Alan Bergman, who oversaw Disney studios, and Dana Walden, who oversaw original content and news for Disney’s streaming platforms and linear networks.
- ESPN: It will continue with the same model and will be led by James Pitaro, former president of ESPN and Sports Content, and formerly president of ESPN.
- Parks, experiences and products: everything remains the same with Josh D’Amaro at the helm.
During the presentation of results, Disney+ has announced subscriber losses for the first time in its history: Over 2 million, all coming from Disney+ HotStar India. Currently, they have 161.8 million subscribers, compared to 164.2 million in the previous quarter.
Iger’s plan to invest in the company’s streaming future includes focusing more on core brands and franchisesselect general entertainment content and balance global and local content.
“Streaming will continue to grow, albeit at the expense of linear programming,” says Iger.
Disney joins the wave of layoffs from big technology
The last few months have been very busy for the big technology companies and layoffs have been announced in practically all of them, Disney being the last to join this trend.
The 3 with the highest number of layoffs have been Amazon, Google and Meta with 18,000, 12,000 and 11,000 workers, respectively.
They are closely followed by Microsoft with 10,000 layoffs in its ranks. The only one standing on the sidelines is Apple, which remains the only giant to have avoided major layoffs thanks largely to Cook’s slow and steady approach.
