As a clear indicator of just how much investors want streaming to continue on as a viable content consumption option, Netflix’s stock value has spent the week steadily growing and growing until it crossed an important milestone today by briefly becoming more valuable than Disney—the same Disney that owns all of the biggest properties in pop culture today. The key word there is “briefly,” as Netflix finished the day with a market cap (essentially the total value of its shares) slightly below Disney’s, but we’re still talking about just over $151 billion versus $152 billion. That’s pretty darn close, even if these are stupidly huge numbers.
That comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which pins Netflix’s success on the fact that it passed 125 million subscribers back in April and made $3.6 billion in the first quarter of the year. As for Disney, it’s printing money with the mainline Star Wars movies and MCU entries like Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War, but its TV networks—specifically ESPN—have been struggling and analysts are expecting Solo: A Star Wars Story to have a lower opening than any of Disney’s other Star Wars movies.
This may seem like good news for Netflix, but it also must be bittersweet for the company’s executives. After all, there’s no telling how much more valuable it could be today if it had held onto King Of The Hill and American Dad. Who knows, maybe Ted Sarandos would be the president and we’d all be living in the United Netflix Accounts Of America?