Hulu
The broadcaster streamer that proved the model.
Last updated November 2026
In brief
Hulu launched in 2008 as the broadcasters' answer to YouTube and piracy — free, ad-supported episodes of current TV — and grew into Disney's general-entertainment streamer with 64.1 million subscriptions (its last reported count, September 2025), now merged into the Disney+ app.
Launched
March 2008 (public)
Founding parents
NBC Universal + News Corp (Disney and others joined later)
Control
Disney, since 2019; full ownership from 2023–24
The Handmaid's Tale Emmy
2017 — first streaming service to win Best Drama
Last reported subscribers
64.1 million (September 2025)
Status
Merged into the Disney+ app in the US
The story: how Hulu rose
Hulu was announced in 2006 as a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, widely mocked in advance (the name came from Mandarin, hùlu, 'gourd holding precious things'). The product silenced most of it: a clean player, current-season episodes of major network shows, free, ad-supported. Hulu answered the piracy wave of the mid-2000s with legitimacy, and invented large-scale AVOD in the process.
The 2010s brought the subscription evolution: Hulu Plus (2010) added more catalogue on more devices for $7.99 with ads, and the company split its identity between free-with-ads and paid tiers. In 2017 The Handmaid's Tale won the Outstanding Drama Emmy — the first streaming service ever to take television's top prize, a year before Netflix managed it. Hulu's next moves — FX on Hulu, Hulu + Live TV (the biggest live-TV bundle in the US) — made it the adult, current-TV complement to Disney+'s family brand.
Ownership was Hulu's permanent subplot. Disney, NBCUniversal and Fox each held stakes after the 21st Century Fox merger left Disney with 60% and operational control in 2019. Disney bought Comcast's 33% stake for about $8.6 billion, agreed after appraisal in 2023 and settled in 2024, taking Hulu fully in-house — and in 2024–25 Disney merged Hulu into the Disney+ app, ending Hulu's life as a standalone interface in the US while keeping it as a brand and content hub.
Year-by-year milestones
- 2008 — Public launch: free, ad-supported network TV online.
- 2010 — Hulu Plus subscription tier launches at $7.99.
- 2011 — Hulu is nearly sold — Yahoo, Google and others bid; the parents keep it.
- 2017 — The Handmaid's Tale wins Outstanding Drama — a streaming first.
- 2019 — Disney takes 60% control via the Fox merger; full ownership follows in 2023–24.
- 2024 — Hulu merges into the Disney+ app; the standalone US app begins to wind down.
- 2025 — Last reported count: 64.1 million subscriptions (September).
Deep dives
Hulu's real legacy: three models at once
Hulu is the only major streamer that ran SVOD, AVOD and live TV simultaneously — subscription with ads, free with ads, and a virtual cable bundle. Its experiments (including 'ad tailoring' and episode-release windows) taught the industry that American viewers accept ads in streaming far more readily than executives believed in 2019.
That belief — 'ads will never touch premium streaming' — is the one the whole industry reversed between 2022 and 2024, and Hulu had run the proof for a decade beforehand.
Where Hulu stands today
Hulu as an app is winding down inside Disney+; Hulu as an institution — current-season TV, FX's prestige slate, the biggest live-TV bundle in the US, and 64 million subscriptions — remains one of Disney's most valuable properties. Its story is the strongest evidence that the broadcasters' 2008 panic response became, twenty years on, a core pillar of the world's largest media company.