The company is retiring Aquatic Life, the free screensaver that turns a 4K TV into a virtual saltwater aquarium. Viewers have begun seeing an on-screen notice saying the screensaver “will no longer be available” starting Dec. 1, 2026, and that it will switch to Roku City.

TheStreet confirmed the notice on a Roku TV. Cord Cutters News first reported the change on Nov. 2.

Roku has not publicly explained the decision. TheStreet has asked the company for comment and will update this story if it responds.

Fans have already started petitions, and the replacement happens to be one of Roku’s most valuable pieces of advertising real estate. The change also lands while Roku is in the middle of a roughly $22 billion takeover by Fox Corp. (FOXA).

Also Read: Fox’s $22 billion Roku bet just won over a longtime skeptic

Roku’s Aquatic Life screensaver is going away Dec. 1

Roku offers Aquatic Life only on 4K streaming devices, according to its support site. After the cutoff, affected users will be switched to Roku City, the animated cityscape Roku introduced in 2017.

The notice tells users who want something different to browse the Theme Store under Settings, then Theme, then Screensaver.

Cord Cutters News noted that several other screensavers aren’t showing the same discontinuation message, including the Jungle and Nautical screensavers, “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and a range of holiday-themed options.

Roku has not shared how many people use Aquatic Life. The company does say it reaches more than 100 million streaming households worldwide.

Why is Roku getting rid of Aquatic Life? What we know about the change

Roku City is more than a screensaver — it has become an advertising product.

In its annual report, Roku described native ads as “high-visibility placements,” including within the Roku City screensaver.

Those ads are one of several types Roku sells inside its own interface, which also include branded wallpaper themes on the Home screen, spotlight ads below the Home screen menu, and marquee ads beside the app tiles.

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Roku said it enhanced Roku City in 2025 with a new format for music, original storytelling, and interactive programming.

The company also shared in its 2023 annual report that it opened the screensaver to major advertisers in a broader range of industries. They included McDonald’s (MCD), Mattel (MAT), and Carnival Cruise Line, part of Carnival Corp. (CCL).

Cord Cutters News noted that viewers have spotted ads in Roku City for years, from a Barbie billboard to McDonald’s golden arches.

Roku has not said whether advertising played any role in retiring Aquatic Life.

Roku fans start petitions to save the Aquatic Life fish tank

Users aren’t taking the news quietly. At least three Change.org petitions started on Nov. 2 ask Roku to keep Aquatic Life, and together they had nearly 800 signatures as of 11:30 a.m. EST on Nov. 3.

One petition started by Toni Hershey said the screensaver’s underwater scenery has become a comforting part of many homes, including for families and children. It asked Roku to gather customer feedback before dropping features people enjoy.

Another petition started by Rhen Denis addressed Roku CEO Anthony Wood, saying the writer has used Aquatic Life for five years and that it makes the room feel cozy and familiar. The petition adds that the writer’s cat is mesmerized by it.

A third, started by Taylor Ellis, also asks Roku to keep the screensaver.

Fans have been vocal before. Roku’s community forums include threads going back to at least 2018 from users who found the aquarium missing from their devices.

In a later thread about the Home screen shortcut disappearing from some Roku Ultra players, one user wrote that their grandkids were not happy and asked, “Papa, how do I get the fish?”

Another user asked Roku to restore the shortcut and said they would “totally pay for it” as a $5-a-month subscription. A third wrote in an earlier thread that they “only purchased Roku because of this.”

Those posts were about earlier changes, not the Dec. 1 removal, but they do show how attached some owners are.

Fox’s $22 billion Roku takeover: Where the deal stands

Fox agreed in June to buy Roku. It will pay $96 in cash and 0.9693 shares of its Class A stock for each Roku share, according to its annual report.

Stockholders of both companies approved the deal in October, but it still needs antitrust clearance, Fox said in a quarterly filing. The Justice Department asked for more information in September, TheWrap also reported. The companies expect to close in the first half of 2027.

Nothing publicly links the screensaver decision to the deal.

How to change your Roku screensaver before Dec. 1

If you’d rather pick your own screensaver than get Roku City by default, you can change it now, according to Roku’s support site.

• Go to Settings, then Theme, then Screensaver.
• Choose an installed screensaver or browse the Theme Store, as the on-screen notice suggests. Roku’s support site says some screensavers are free and others can be purchased.
• Select Preview to see how a screensaver looks before you commit.
• Choose how long your Roku waits before the screensaver starts, or turn it off.

Related: Instagram quietly makes major change for Apple TV users

But even then, finding something worth watching wasn’t always easy. Sometimes I’d spend more time scrolling through titles than actually watching anything.

That’s what came to mind when Jim Cramer discussed Netflix on Oct. 29, during the “Mad Money” Lightning Round.

He believes the stock “can’t lift,” and that the streaming giant has a problem investors shouldn’t ignore.

You used to be able to say, 'Hey, you seen that movie?' 'Yeah, I'm gonna go buy Netflix.' People don't do that anymore.... because they don't even know if it's on Netflix. Maybe it's on Amazon. Maybe it's on HBO. Maybe it's on Apple. I mean, who even knows? And that’s Netflix’s biggest problem.

Netflix’s “shared living room” is fragmented

Cramer’s argument is about behavior, not spreadsheets.

For years, Netflix was the default answer to “Where can I watch that?” It worked like a shared digital living room. If a show was the talk of the office, you already had the app.

Studios then pulled their libraries back to launch their own services. These days, hearing about a new movie doesn’t automatically make you open Netflix. You might have to check several streaming apps, consider another subscription, or even give up looking for it.

Also Read: Netflix is losing ground to YouTube

Add price increases, with the standard plan now at $19.99 a month and premium at $26.99, according to Netflix, and password-sharing crackdowns, and subscribers start judging value per hour watched.

I covered Netflix in September when it sat at a key support level near $71, and the main debate was YouTube. Cramer’s point sits next to that one. Digital i’s report I highlighted found YouTube’s average daily viewing overtook Netflix globally in 2025. 

All of that reflected on the stock. Netflix (NFLX) trades at $62, down 33.82% year to date and 43.61% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance. That is less than half of its all-time high of $134.12, set on June 30, 2025.

In another report by my colleague at TheStreet, Nielsen’s July Gauge put YouTube at a record 14.2% of all U.S. TV time, against 7.8% for Netflix, which ranked fourth. Nielsen figures cited in TheStreet‘s reporting show YouTube’s share has since climbed higher still.

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What Netflix admitted on its own earnings call

The company did not argue with the engagement concern. On the Q3 call on Oct. 20, CFO Spence Neumann said: “To be clear, we want to grow view hours faster. We’re not satisfied. We’re working on it.”

Co-CEO Greg Peters said the U.S. slate needs to go “from very good to great,” and acknowledged that the advertising business is behind its targets because new ad products rolled out later than planned.

Netflix also made its largest headcount reductions since 2022. Peters called the reaction to price changes the ultimate test of value, which depends on how much people watch.

Related: Why Netflix reportedly walked away from Xbox licensing deal

The financials were not weak. Revenue grew roughly 12% to $12.87 billion, according to Netflix’s Q3 shareholder letter, and operating margin hit a record 34.6%, helped by cost timing that management expects to reverse in Q4. 

Free cash flow rose about 8%, even after another $5 billion in content spending. The problem was the outlook.

Growth is expected to slow to around 11% in Q4, and management would not commit to its 2027 double-digit sales growth target. Shares fell more than 5% after the report and kept sliding.

Two views of Netflix

Last week I wrote about Bill Ackman’s return to Netflix. He called it a “high-growth utility” and said it was hard to get anyone to cancel. He argued the stock trades around 18 times earnings, one of its lowest valuations ever.

Cramer is now on the same company from the opposite direction. Ackman sees a service people keep. Cramer sees a service people no longer think of first.

Both can be true at once, and I think that’s the real story. Churn is low. Management says it improved in the U.S. and internationally, better than expected. Customers who already have Netflix rarely leave.

The harder job is making the next customer choose Netflix over four other apps, and that is a growth problem rather than a retention problem.

I’ve noticed this in my own viewing habits. I haven’t necessarily lost interest in Netflix, but I no longer assume I’ll find something worth watching every time I open the app. Sometimes I spend so long looking for a movie that I end up watching nothing at all.

What could change the Netflix picture?

The bull case has real catalysts. The ad-supported tier launches in 15 more markets in 2027, starting in March 2027 across nine EMEA countries plus Colombia, Peru, and New Zealand, according to Netflix’s shareholder letter.

That is the kind of rollout that added members when the tier first launched elsewhere. India is already a bright spot: View hours there grew 24% year over year, and paid net additions hit a record.

Further U.S. price increases and better ad inventory fill are also possible, and at roughly 18 times earnings, the valuation no longer asks much of the story.

The trouble is that none of those fix the question Cramer asked. A cheaper ad tier lowers the barrier to signing up. It does not tell a viewer where the movie their friend mentioned is hiding.

Netflix needs a hit big enough that people say its name again, the way they once said “Squid Game.” Management says it is adjusting the team to make that happen.

Until then, Cramer’s message is that a stock needs a story people repeat to each other, and for now, Netflix’s loudest story is that it can’t lift.

The next test is Q4 results on Jan. 20, 2026, when Netflix has to show that view hours are growing and that the ad ramp is back on schedule.

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I was there for the big screen, the popcorn, the hype, and the chance to forget about everything else for a couple of hours. 

Years later, I walked into a modern theater with reclining seats and a much more luxurious setup. It was a completely different experience, comfortable, expensive, and a little too polished. But surprisingly, a part of me still missed the simplicity of that first experience.

That gap between a great experience and a great investment is the AMC (AMC) story in 2026. On Oct. 29, 2026, during the “Mad Money” Lightning Round, Jim Cramer gave a caller his verdict.

I think that this stock should be sold.

What looks odd is the timing. AMC just had its best quarter in its 106-year history. The stock is up 97.44% year to date and 15.79% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance. It trades at $3.08, just below its 52-week high of $3.40 set on Sept. 28, 2026.

Also Read: AMC Theatres CEO says one long-running entertainment debate is finally over

A record quarter that makes AMC’s sell call look strange

There is a contradiction here. In Q2 2026, AMC reported total revenue of roughly $1.6 billion, up about 14.2% year over year, according to AMC’s Q2 earnings release.

Adjusted EBITDA jumped 70% to $321.4 million, the first time it has ever crossed $300 million in a quarter. Free cash flow was $190.1 million. Adjusted EPS was $0.14.

In our 106-year history, never before has AMC had such superb results.

He added that AMC “has often been underestimated, and yet we continue to outperform.”

AMC is the world’s largest theater chain, with roughly 860 theaters and 9,600 screens. A summer box office lifted by hits such as “The Odyssey” gave it the kind of quarter exhibitors spend years hoping for. 

If you judged the business on its own, Cramer’s call would be hard to defend. That is the point. His call is about the stock, not the popcorn.

Where AMC’s bear case actually lives

I covered a similar split earlier when Cramer told viewers to sell Rocket Lab after a Neutron delay: a story the market loved, and a balance sheet it could not ignore. AMC fits the pattern for different reasons. Three stand out.

First, debt. Even after reducing principal balances by about $1.7 billion since the end of 2020, AMC still carries nearly $4 billion in long-term debt.

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CEO Adam Aron noted the company refinanced $400 million, extending maturities by four years, and has no maturities currently expected until 2029.

I admit that is real progress. It also means interest costs remain a heavy weight on a business whose profits arrive in bursts.

Second, the gap between adjusted and reported results. While adjusted EPS was positive, the GAAP net loss widened to $11.4 million from $4.7 million a year earlier, even in its strongest quarter in history. Many fundamental investors discount adjusted figures when the bottom line remains in the red at peak season.

Third, dilution. In the same quarter, AMC raised about $285 million in gross proceeds through equity offerings. That keeps the balance sheet healthier, but every new share trims the value of the ones already held.

Why a theater chain trades like a ticket to something else

I felt this tension again while thinking about that recliner theater. A ticket there costs more than a whole evening out used to cost in my city, and people still pay it for the right movie.

The business can be healthy while the stock behaves like a lottery ticket. Retail traders have treated AMC as a symbol since the meme-stock era, which means its price often reflects sentiment more than cash flow.

Cramer has long favored companies with strong balance sheets over speculative stocks, and his Lightning Round answers rarely leave much room for nuance. Still, Aron raised a valid point.

He said reducing leverage should lower interest rates on roughly 75% of AMC’s debt, potentially saving the company about $51 million in annual interest expenses if the required conditions are met. That would come on top of the $16 million in savings already achieved.

The next test is close. AMC reports Q3 earnings on Nov. 4 after the market closes. For holders who have ridden the stock up almost 100% this year, that report decides whether the summer was a turning point or a peak. 

A film business lives and dies by its slate, and a record quarter has to be repeated before the market stops pricing it as a one-off.

For the casual moviegoer, AMC may be in the best shape of its modern life. For the investor, Cramer’s message is that a good year at the box office does not erase a $4 billion debt.

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YouTube figured that out early. It shares ad revenue with the people who make its videos, and that deal turned it into the biggest video platform in the world.

Plenty of apps have tried to catch up. Few have matched that check.

If you make videos for a living, that difference shows up in your bank account. A view on one app can be worth real money, while the same view on another is worth nothing but exposure.

Now one of the biggest apps on the planet wants long videos too. It just isn’t offering the same deal.

Instagram is testing 90-minute videos

Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms (META), is testing a format called Features that lets creators post horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long, Tubefilter reported.

The test started with some long-form creators in Brazil. Instagram plans to expand it to “tens of thousands of creators” in the U.S. “over the coming months.”

The videos are built for podcasters, comedians and other long-form creators. They’re also headed to Instagram’s TV app, which now runs on Apple TV.

Short clips point viewers to the full episode

Creators can cut short clips from a Features video and post them as Reels. Each clip links back to the full video.

Up to eight clips can point to one long video, Convergence reported. “You see a clip of a podcast that you love, you can just click and continue watching,” said Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product, according to Tubefilter.

It’s a big reversal for Instagram head Adam Mosseri. “For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram,” he said, Tubefilter reported.

Instagram’s boss says paying creators loses money

Here’s the catch. Instagram isn’t sharing ad revenue on these videos.

A Meta spokesperson said it’s “too early to share a long-term monetization model,” according to Tubefilter. The company said it’s exploring ways for creators to earn “from brands, fans, and Instagram.”

Mosseri was blunter about Instagram’s existing payment program. “We spend more money than we make back by a long shot,” he said on The Colin and Samir Show, Net Influencer reported.

He added that creators “don’t produce a lot more when we pay.” In other words, paying them mostly shifts views around instead of creating new ones.

Instagram is directly funding some creators in the test, Variety reported, according to Net Influencer.

YouTube still sets the bar

That’s where YouTube pulls ahead.

YouTube gives creators in its Partner Program 55% of net ad revenue on long-form videos, according to its help center. For Shorts, creators get 45% of a shared revenue pool.

The totals are huge. YouTube said it paid out more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over four years, Shacknews reported in September 2025.

By my math, that’s about $25 billion a year on average.

Here’s how the two offers compare for long videos:

• YouTube long-form ad share: 55% of net ad revenue
• YouTube Shorts: 45% of a shared creator pool
• Instagram Features: No ad revenue share yet
• Instagram’s pitch: Reach, brand deals and possible future incentives

Some video makers are skeptical

Not everyone is sold.

“If people can watch my long-form on Instagram instead of YouTube, am I cannibalizing my AdSense?” creator Vanessa Lau asked, according to The Publish Press.

“I can see it disincentivizing a lot of creators from posting their full long-form there,” she added.

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Others see value in the audience. “Attention and discovery are forms of currency,” Samir of The Colin and Samir Show said, The Publish Press reported.

Mosseri seemed to hear the complaints. “We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid,” he wrote on X.

Where to post your full-length work

If you make videos, the math is simple. Every full-length view you move from YouTube to Instagram could be a view that no longer earns ad money.

That doesn’t mean Instagram is a bad bet. It means you should use it for what it pays in, which today is reach.

Here’s a practical approach:

• Keep full episodes on YouTube. That’s where the ad share lives
• Use Instagram clips as a funnel. Post Reels that point fans to your full video
• Sell sponsorship across both. Brand deals can pay for Instagram views even without an ad share
• Track where income actually comes from. Compare earnings per view on each app every month

Meta has a bigger bill to cover

There’s a bigger reason Meta is careful with cash right now.

The company plans to spend $135 billion to $145 billion on capital projects this year, mostly for AI, according to its third-quarter earnings release. It’s also selling up to about $100 billion of stock to help pay for that buildout.

I’d expect Meta to keep testing cheaper ways to reward creators before it commits to a YouTube-style revenue split.

For now, Instagram is asking creators for their longest work while paying mostly in attention. Whether that’s enough will decide if Features becomes a real YouTube rival or another IGTV.

Related: Zuckerberg says Meta’s AI bet only fails if all AI fails

The streaming company is said to have offered a deal worth half a billion dollars. But Microsoft wanted much more.

According to Matthew Belloni’s report in Puck News, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma asked for $800 million instead, Gadgets Now noted. Then Netflix said no and pulled its offer entirely after an executive change.

How the Netflix-Xbox talks collapsed

The original $500 million offer came from Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s former chief content officer. Sharma and her team countered with an $800 million ask, which Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann rejected because it was too expensive, Puck reported. However, the deal was still on the table at the time.  

Also read: Bank of America backs Disney stock as your streaming bill climbs

Then a Netflix restructuring in mid-October brought about 1,000 job cuts and the exit of Bajaria after a decade with the company. After Bajaria left, former Disney executive Peter Rice stepped in as her replacement, Netflix announced.

It was only after the replacement that the Xbox offer came off the table.

Why Xbox felt confident asking for $800 million

Xbox had its reason for asking for a higher amount. Amazon’s “Fallout” show and HBO’s “The Last of Us” both proved that a hit TV adaptation can improve game sales and bring old titles back to life.

And with the 2023 purchase of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft owns the biggest game catalog outside of China.

On Oct. 8, 2026, Microsoft also launched a new division called Xbox XP, led by former Mojang president Kayleen Walters, Xbox confirmed. The group was formed to handle film, TV, merchandise, live events, and brand partnerships.

“Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them,” Sharma said in a staff message, as Morningstar reported. 

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Now, instead of entering an encompassing exclusive deal with just one company, Xbox is pursuing multiple smaller deals. For example, Amazon gets “Fallout” Season 3, Paramount Pictures gets a “Call of Duty” movie, and Netflix still gets “Gears of War” and “Diablo.”

What the walk-away signals for Netflix shareholders

Netflix investors have been worried about the company spending too much, and the stock’s third-quarter results suggest their worries are valid.

In Q3, Netflix’s revenue grew 12% year over year to $12.9 billion, which sounds fine at first glance, but the company also lowered the forecast for its 2026 advertising revenue from $3 billion to $2.7 billion, an SEC filing confirmed.

A lower ad revenue forecast means Netflix expects less money to come in, which is why investors are paying attention to its spending.

Related: Ackman’s $1 billion Netflix return has a remarkable twist

Wall Street was already losing patience before that report. Back in July, Barclays analysts said Netflix was “losing narrative control,” meaning investors no longer trusted its growth story, Stocktwits reported. When investors begin to lose trust in a stock, the company’s management usually has to prove it can be careful with cash. 

Netflix rejecting Xbox’s counter can be seen as a sign that the company’s new leadership is doing exactly that. 

The risk Netflix takes by passing on Xbox IP

If gaming adaptations keep producing hits, Netflix could watch competitors build loyal fan bases that might have helped to improve its own number of subscribers. 

Microsoft said Netflix remains a “valued partner,” so the other projects they’re working on together, like the Minecraft and Diablo shows, are still on track. 

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And for thousands of workers at the newly merged entertainment giant Skydance, the change will come sooner than expected. The company, formed after Paramount completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this month, is adopting a mandatory five-day in-office policy across its operations.

Skydance is also offering eligible employees voluntary buyouts, giving some workers who do not want to make the transition an opportunity to leave with severance.

The changes were outlined in an internal email from Skydance CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz on Oct. 26, first shared on X by journalist Scott Nover.

The move comes as Skydance begins integrating thousands of employees across Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, CBS, and other businesses while pursuing billions of dollars in cost savings.

Skydance adopts strict 5-day office policy

The new policy expands a requirement already introduced at Paramount to the broader Skydance workforce.

Paramount employees assigned to offices were previously required to work in person five days a week, while Warner Bros. Discovery employees generally followed a three-day office schedule.

In their memo, Ellison and Kreiz defended the policy, arguing that employees working together in person strengthens collaboration, creativity, and the company’s culture.

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“We believe in-person collaboration is vital to our culture and to the success of our business,” the executives wrote.

They acknowledged that the change could disrupt employees’ established routines.

Skydance plans to implement the requirement in phases by location, rather than setting a single companywide start date. Employees will receive advance notice and support from managers during the transition, according to the memo.

The company has not publicly provided a detailed implementation schedule or clarified whether exceptions will be available.

What Skydance employees can expect from the buyout offer

In addition to the office mandate, Skydance is introducing a one-time voluntary buyout program for qualifying employees.

Eligible workers will receive individual communications outlining their severance terms and the deadline for making a decision.

According to an Oct. 26 Business Insider report, which reviewed a separate HR email, the standard package offers two weeks of severance pay for every year of employment at Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery.

Some employees may receive different packages, depending on their circumstances. Workers who receive an offer must decide whether to accept it by Nov. 8, 2026, at 11 p.m. EST.

The HR communication described the program as voluntary and said that no additional buyout offers are planned. Employees who do not respond by the deadline will be considered to have declined the offer.

Skydance has not disclosed how many employees qualify for the program or how many departures it expects.

Skydance previously saw 600 workers accept buyouts

This is not the first time Skydance has paired stricter attendance requirements with an employee exit program.

Following the 2025 Paramount-Skydance merger, the company announced a phased return-to-office policy beginning in January 2026.

Employees in New York and Los Angeles at the vice-president level and below were offered voluntary severance if they were unwilling or unable to return to full-time work.

Approximately 600 employees accepted the offer, according to Paramount’s November 2025 SEC-filed shareholder letter.

The company separately eliminated approximately 1,000 positions in October 2025 as part of its restructuring.

Now, after acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6, Skydance faces another round of workforce integration. In its official merger announcement, the company outlined a goal of generating at least $6 billion in annual run-rate savings within three years.

Executives have said much of the savings will come from areas outside labor, including technology, procurement and real estate, although additional layoffs are also expected.

The merger is already bringing changes for customers. As I previously reported, the combined company plans to eventually bring HBO Max and Paramount+ together as part of its streaming strategy.

Now with the November deadline approaching, Skydance’s latest policy could lead to another wave of employee departures before full workforce integration is complete.

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You pay with your attention, and the company sells that attention to advertisers. The more minutes you give, the more money it makes.

For years, that trade happened mostly on your phone. You scrolled on the couch while the TV played something else.

The TV itself belonged to cable, then to Netflix (NFLX) and other paid streamers. YouTube was the first free platform to break in.

It turned creator videos into something people actually sit down and watch. Paid streamers have spent the years since raising prices to keep up.

Now another giant wants the same spot in your living room.

Instagram lands on Apple TV without a launch event

Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms (META), now has an app for Apple (AAPL) TV, MacRumors reported.

Related: HBO Max, Paramount+ subscribers pay more after $110 billion merger

The app appears to have gone live on Oct. 23. Apple TV release metadata dates version 66.0 to that day, MacRumors reported.

There was no press release and no stage event. An archived App Store listing from Oct. 19 still showed support only for iPhone and iPad.

Reels, live shows and longer videos hit the big screen

The app plays Reels, longer videos and live shows, which MacRumors said are coming to Apple TV for the first time. You’ll need tvOS 26.0 or later.

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Instagram says the app “lets users watch content from their favorite creators, discover videos, and resume watching across devices,” according to MacRumors.

It also pitches the app as a way to watch together with family. In reality, the design is built to keep you watching.

On earlier versions, Reels played automatically and were sorted into channels such as comedy, music and lifestyle, TechCrunch reported.

You could also link up to five accounts to one TV, or create an account just for TV viewing, TechCrunch reported.

A yearlong rollout reached four platforms

Apple TV is the last stop in a steady expansion:

• December 2025: Testing began on Amazon (AMZN) Fire TV in the U.S.
• February 2026: The app reached Google TV devices from Alphabet (GOOGL)
• June 2026: Samsung smart TVs were added, along with plans for longer videos, episodic series and live broadcasts
• October 2026: Apple TV support arrived

Meta has been blunt about the reason.

“If behavior [and] the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV too,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in October 2025, TheStreet reported.

YouTube still owns the biggest share of viewing

That is the bar Instagram has to clear.

YouTube took 13.5% of all U.S. TV viewing in June, compared with 7.9% for Netflix, according to Nielsen’s Gauge, as reported by MediaPost.

That matters for your bill. When free platforms win more of your evening, paid services have to work harder to justify what they charge.

Netflix has already signaled another U.S. price hike, TheStreet reported.

TikTok is chasing the same screen. It already has its own TV app, TechCrunch noted.

Instagram is also testing longer formats. The Verge reported that the TV app could play a role in Meta’s push into microdramas, short serialized shows built around quick episodes.

Your attention is worth about $17.75 to Meta

This is where your wallet comes in.

Meta’s revenue rose 26% to $64.6 billion in the third quarter, according to its earnings release. Its apps averaged 3.64 billion daily users in September.

By my rough math, that works out to about $17.75 per daily user for the quarter. Over a year, that’s roughly $71 from each person who opens Meta’s apps every day.

Meta measures per-user revenue its own way, so treat my figure as a ballpark. The point holds, though: you are the product being sold.

And the price is rising. Meta’s average price per ad climbed 14% in the quarter, while ad impressions rose 10%, the release showed.

User growth is slowing, up just 3% from a year earlier. That means Meta needs more minutes from the people it already has, and a TV session lasts longer than a scroll.

Engagement is already climbing. Instagram’s time spent per user “reached an all time high,” CFO Susan Li said on the Oct. 21 call.

Roku remains the missing piece

Apple TV adds a real audience. It held about 15% of U.S. connected-TV device share in the third quarter of 2025, according to Pixalate data cited by TheStreet.

Roku (ROKU) led that list at 36%. None of the reports on the Apple TV launch mention an Instagram app for Roku.

That is the gap to watch. Without Roku, Instagram is still missing the biggest TV platform on that list.

If a Roku app does arrive, Instagram would cover all four of the biggest platforms in that data.

Should you download it? Set these up first

The app costs nothing, and that is exactly why it deserves a little thought.

If you do try it, here’s how to stay in control:

• Update first. Check that your Apple TV runs tvOS 26.0 or later
• Separate your profiles. Give kids their own account, or keep Instagram off the shared TV
• Use it to cut costs. If creator videos already fill your evenings, a paid plan may be worth trimming
• Set a stopping point. Autoplay makes “one more video” easy to repeat

What shareholders need to watch next

If you own Meta stock, the TV app is a small piece of a very large business.

Investors have seen this play before. Reels launched in 2020 as Meta’s answer to TikTok, and video now drives record engagement on Facebook and Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the October call.

Meta expects fourth-quarter revenue of $73 billion to $76 billion, and it plans to spend $135 billion to $145 billion this year, much of it on AI, the release showed.

Ads have to pay for that bill. Every new screen Instagram reaches gives Meta more room to sell them.

Expect two things next: a push onto Roku, and more long-form shows designed for the couch. Instagram has your phone, and now it wants the evenings you spend in front of the TV.

Related: Facebook makes daring move to challenge Disney, Netflix

He has spent years attacking mainstream outlets on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022. Now he may own a slice of two of the biggest names in American news.

That is not as strange as it sounds once you follow the money. The world’s biggest media deals now run on billionaire checks, and the billionaires in this one have been backing each other for years.

It also matters beyond the headlines. The same company that owns these newsrooms sets the price of two streaming services millions of households pay for every month.

And if you own the stock, the price paid by the newest investors tells you a lot about where it may be headed.

Musk has invested about $1 billion in Skydance (SKYD), the media company led by David Ellison that owns CNN and CBS News, Semafor reported on Oct. 22, according to The Telegraph. The investment gives Musk an indirect stake in both networks.

Neither Musk nor Skydance has confirmed the deal. A Skydance spokesperson declined to comment, and a Musk representative did not respond, Variety reported.

What Semafor reported about Musk’s $1 billion stake

Skydance was formed from the roughly $111 billion merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, Variety reported. The deal closed on Oct. 6 and brought CNN, CBS, HBO, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures under one roof.

The combined company is huge: Its annual revenues are roughly $70 billion and it has more than 200 million streaming subscribers, CEOWORLD reported.

That deal also left the company carrying a heavy load. Skydance has some $80 billion in net debt and is targeting $6 billion in cost savings over three years, Variety reported.

The move did not come out of nowhere.

Last month, Semafor reported that David Ellison was considering reaching out to Musk to “become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount,” according to Variety.

Musk’s money arrived as Skydance sought fresh cash from other investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs, according to Semafor’s report as described by The Telegraph.

Here is what remains unclear, according to coverage of the report:

• Whether the money came from Musk personally or from SpaceX, Benzinga reported.
• The share price Musk paid and the size of his resulting stake, which have not been disclosed, CEOWORLD reported.
• Whether the deal comes with any distribution or content partnership. None has been announced.

In my analysis, $1 billion is a small check for a company this size. It equals about 2% of the $47 billion Skydance raised in new equity to fund the Warner deal.

Why Larry Ellison and Musk keep backing each other

The relationship runs deep. Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder and David Ellison’s father, put about $1 billion into Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover in 2022, Variety reported.

More on the Paramount-Warner deal:

• Paramount just offered up its crown jewel
• Skydance just raised prices. Here’s what’s happening next
• Paramount’s Warner merger has a new power play problem

Ellison also invested in Tesla in 2018 and sat on its board from 2018 to 2022, Benzinga reported. He personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity behind the Warner deal.

Media veteran John Malone saw it coming. “These guys are very intertwined,” the former Liberty Media chairman said of Ellison and Musk at a Paley Center event, Variety reported.

Malone even floated a much bigger number. He suggested SpaceX could invest “$8 billion or $10 billion” in Skydance and predicted a “global output deal” for its content, according to Variety.

The Telegraph described Musk’s investment as repaying a favor. Malone also said Ellison raised some of the Warner money using Tesla stock, and added, “I would not doubt for a minute that before very long you’re going to see an announcement,” according to Benzinga.

Does Musk get a say over CNN and CBS News?

Not on paper. The Ellisons and RedBird Capital own 100% of Skydance’s voting shares, Variety reported, so a minority investor buying ordinary equity would not get a vote on how the company is run.

CNN’s chief executive has said the network’s independence will hold. Skydance’s leaders “both understand and will fully support the principle and practice of the kind of independent news that CNN has always stood for,” CEO Mark Thompson said, according to The Telegraph.

There is one awkward detail. Skydance’s HBO Max holds North American streaming rights to “Musk,” a documentary the billionaire has publicly criticized, Benzinga reported. The film has a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Director Alex Gibney has said Skydance representatives assured him the film would air on HBO next year, CEOWORLD reported. That gives investors and viewers a simple early test of whether the new shareholder changes anything.

What the Musk investment means for people who own Skydance stock

This is the part I’d focus on if you hold the shares or are thinking about buying. The biggest backers in Skydance’s equity raise paid $12 a share, including the Ellison family, according to 24/7 Wall St.

The stock closed at $7.10 on Oct. 20, about 41% below that price, 24/7 Wall St. reported. Powell Jobs’ roughly $250 million stake was showing a paper loss of about $102 million.

The slide has been fast. Shares fell almost 24% on Oct. 14 alone, the day they began trading without warrants attached, 24/7 Wall St. reported.

Analysts are cautious. Their consensus rating is Hold, with an average price target of about $8.87, CEOWORLD reported.

A famous name on the shareholder list does not fix a balance sheet. What matters for your money is whether Skydance can cut that $80 billion debt load and hit its savings target.

What the Musk investment means for HBO Max and Paramount+ subscribers

If you pay for streaming, the ownership story matters less than the bill. HBO Max and Paramount+ subscribers already face higher prices after the merger, TheStreet reported.

A company with this much debt has every reason to keep raising prices and bundling services. Musk’s money helps at the margin, but it does not change that math.

Watch for any distribution deal between Skydance and Musk’s companies. Malone’s prediction of a “global output deal” would be the bigger story if it happens.

Until then, keep your focus on the things you control: what you pay each month for streaming, and how much of your portfolio rides on a heavily indebted media company.

For now, Musk owns a slice of CNN and CBS News on paper. The people who control those newsrooms, and the price of your streaming plan, are still named Ellison.

Related: Skydance’s just raised prices. Here’s what happening next

Now it means film-level spending, stretched across years. Streaming services have learned that one giant hit can pull in millions of subscribers, so they keep raising the stakes.

That math works only if the audience shows up and keeps paying. When it doesn’t, the bill usually lands somewhere, and often on your monthly streaming plan.

You’ve probably felt it already. Netflix has made it clear a U.S. price hike is coming, and Disney+ raised monthly prices for millions of subscribers, TheStreet reported.

Every streaming service is chasing the same thing: a must-watch show big enough to justify what it charges. You can see that tension clearly in one of the most anticipated shows in years.

It’s a story most fans know by heart, about a boy wizard, a castle, and a lot of very expensive sets.

HBO’s new Harry Potter series had cost about £147.4 million, or nearly $200 million, by the end of 2025, roughly halfway through filming its first season, The Times of London reported, according to Winter is Coming.

Spending had already reached about £129 million, or roughly $172 million, when filming began in July 2025, The Times reported.

Filming continued until May 2026, so the final figure is expected to be higher, Winter is Coming reported. HBO has not commented on the budget.

How much HBO’s Harry Potter series costs

The figures come from U.K. company filings. Plum Jam Productions, the special-purpose company behind the series, reported revenue of about £130.6 million, roughly $175 million, in 2025, up from £18.4 million in 2024, according to Deadline’s analysis, as reported by Comic Basics.

Total launch spending could reach about £150 million, or roughly $201 million, Comic Basics noted. Spread over eight episodes, that works out to about $25.2 million per episode.

Related: Disney+ delivers bad news to millions of subscribers

The season is long, too. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is expected to run about eight hours across eight episodes, though actor Johnny Flynn reportedly said it will be closer to 10, Winter is Coming reported.

There’s a caveat. Plum Jam has housed other productions, so not every pound in its accounts may belong to Harry Potter, Comic Basics indicated.

In my analysis, the per-episode number matters less than the total. A $25 million episode is expensive, but HBO isn’t buying one season. It’s buying a decade.

How Harry Potter HBO series compares with “Game of Thrones” and the movies

The series will rank alongside the final season of “Game of Thrones” and “The Last of Us” as one of HBO’s most expensive shows, a source told Deadline, according to Comic Basics.

Here is how the numbers stack up, according to reports compiled by fan and entertainment outlets:

• Harry Potter season one: About $25.2 million per episode, based on Deadline’s analysis of U.K. filings.
• “Game of Thrones,” final season: Widely reported at about $15 million per episode.
• The most expensive Harry Potter films: About $250 million each, for “Goblet of Fire” and “Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” FandomWire reported.
• All eight films: About $1.2 billion to make, earning about $7.7 billion worldwide, Comic Basics confirmed.

With spending already near $200 million at the halfway mark, the first season looks likely to pass the priciest films. That’s an estimate based on the filings, not a figure HBO has confirmed.

Some numbers online are far bigger. Claims of $100 million per episode remain unverified speculation, Comic Basics noted, so view them cautiously.

Why HBO is betting so much on one show

HBO isn’t making just one season. Six further series are planned over the next decade, The Times noted.

That kind of long-term plan only works if the first season hits. One unnamed insider said the show “has to be a huge hit,” according to Cosmic Book News.

More Streaming:

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The upside is huge. The Harry Potter films earned roughly six times their production cost, and a long-running series can feed merchandise, theme parks, and games for years.

The sets alone are enormous. Director of photography Adriano Goldman said he “wouldn’t be surprised if it had the biggest construction budget ever,” according to Epicstream, citing an earlier ScreenRant interview.

The cast is also unusually young, and children grow up fast. That makes a tight production schedule part of the cost, since delays can’t simply be absorbed season after season.

What it means for your HBO Max bill

This is the part I’d watch most as a subscriber. HBO Max now belongs to Skydance, the company formed from the $111 billion merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which has about $80 billion in net debt, Variety reported.

For now, HBO Max prices haven’t changed after the merger. Plans cost $10.99 a month with ads, $18.49 for Standard, and $22.99 for Premium, TheStreet reported.

That could change. Skydance already raised Discovery+ prices, with the ad-free plan rising to $11.99 from $9.99, according to TheStreet.

Investors are feeling the strain, too. Skydance shares closed at $7.10 on Oct. 20, about 41% below the $12 per share its biggest backers paid, according to 24/7 Wall St. A breakout hit would help that story, and a flop would hurt it.

Here is how to keep your streaming costs in check around the premiere:

• Time your subscription. If you only want Harry Potter, sign up when the season is out and cancel after you finish.
• Pick the cheapest plan you’ll actually use. The ad-supported plan costs less than half of Premium.
• Check bundles. Some phone, internet, and credit card plans include HBO Max at a discount.
• Watch for price-hike emails. Streaming services usually notify existing subscribers before a new rate applies.

When the Harry Potter series premieres

The first season, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” is set to debut at Christmas 2026 on HBO and HBO Max, according to multiple reports.

Fan sites differ on the exact day, with some citing Dec. 25 and others Dec. 26, so check HBO’s official listing closer to launch.

A show this expensive has to win twice: once with fans on Christmas and again with the subscribers who keep paying long after the credits roll.

Related: Paramount just offered up its crown jewel

What interests me most is how quickly a service like Netflix can go from being an occasional source of entertainment to something people rarely think about giving up. I remember once telling myself I was done watching TV series because I kept getting hooked. 

One episode would turn into another, and before I knew it, I’d spent hours on Netflix. So I decided to stick to movies instead. But even then, I often found myself looking for something else to watch. That’s the thing about Netflix: there’s always something pulling you back.

Also Read: Netflix’s content shakeup lands as Wall Street loses patience

Millions of people share that habit. Netflix (NFLX) now has more than 325 million paid subscribers, nearly double its closest rival, and an audience approaching 1 billion people, Netflix said in its shareholder letter. 

In its third quarter, reported Oct. 20, 2026, revenue rose 12% to $12.87 billion, operating margin hit 34.6% from 28.2% a year ago, and diluted EPS jumped 49% to $0.87 vs. $0.59 in Q3’25.

Pershing Square’s second-quarter fiscal 2026 investor letter mentioned that Netflix has “effectively won the streaming wars.” 

Founder Bill Ackman went further on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, calling Netflix a “high-growth utility,” on Oct. 22. However, Netflix has cost Ackman dearly before, and not every number this quarter was perfect.

Ackman returns to Netflix after a $400 million loss

Back in August, my colleague Peace Longe covered Pershing Square when it disclosed a new Netflix position of 3.15 million shares, about 4.9% of its portfolio. 

Ackman bought more than 3 million shares in early 2022 and sold the whole stake about three months later, after Netflix reported its first subscriber decline in a decade. The loss was more than $400 million.

His reason then was predictability. Changes to Netflix’s business model made results too hard to forecast for a fund that runs a small number of large bets. Four years later, he sees a clear leader whose scale allows it to spend more on shows while maintaining strong margins.

More Netflix:

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He also says the price is right. Ackman said the stock trades near 18x earnings, one of its lowest valuations in history, with earnings growth he expects in the mid-to-high teens. 

He noted that the two now trade at similar multiples, whereas four years ago, the gap between earnings and cash flow was large. Netflix generated $2.88 billion in free cash flow in the third quarter, and operating income rose 37% to $4.46 billion.

What Netflix’s latest numbers show about its global customers

Growth is global. Revenue in the U.S. and Canada was $5.63 billion, up 11%. Europe, the Middle East and Africa brought in $4.11 billion, up 11% (9% excluding currency), Latin America $1.60 billion, up 17%, and Asia-Pacific $1.54 billion, up 12%.

India shows what that looks like on the ground. According to the Q3 report, Netflix had its largest quarter of paid net additions there, aided by a loyalty bundle with Flipkart, and revenue grew about 18% excluding currency. View hours rose 24%. Across the service, non-English content now makes up more than a third of viewing, up from under 10% a decade ago.

Related: Netflix Q3 2026 Earnings: Recap of $NFLX Earnings, Outlook

I find Netflix’s growing focus on international content particularly interesting. It’s appealing to see a global streaming platform finding stories from different cultures and languages, rather than just Hollywood productions. It helps explain why Netflix is attracting viewers far beyond the U.S.

Customers are sticking. Netflix said churn improved year over year globally and in the U.S., and that members responded to 2026 price increases as expected, with subscription revenue growth driven by more members and pricing. That matters to Ackman, who says it is hard to get someone to cancel and that he doesn’t know who would displace Netflix.

Netflix also repurchased 63.9 million shares for $4.8 billion, its largest quarterly buyback ever, which Ackman put at about 3% of outstanding shares.

Ackman sees disappointment as the opportunity

Not everything beats. Netflix cut its 2026 advertising revenue outlook to about $2.7 billion from about $3 billion, citing a slower rollout of ad product capabilities. Netflix says it plans to bring the ad tier to 15 more countries in 2027, starting in March across nine European, Middle Eastern and African markets, Colombia, Peru and New Zealand.

Ackman acknowledged the need for bigger hits like Squid Game, saying management is adjusting the team. In fact, he called management excellent. 

He argues that short-term investors are always looking for something to be disappointed about, and that a cheaper stock helps Pershing Square because Netflix then buys back more shares. He expects a return well into the 20s per year.

For investors, the story is the contrast. In 2022, a decline in subscribers was enough to make Ackman walk away. Now he is betting that a steadier, cash-rich Netflix can survive a few soft spots.

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While the wheels on these spin-offs have been turning for a while, the company announced its spin-off plans over the summer, and the recent success of its movie studio division, driven by the runaway hit ‘The Odyssey’, is certainly making the transition much easier.

Also read: Comcast’s NBC Universal spinoff just transformed streaming wars

Comcast reported its quarterly results this week and said the upcoming spin-off is proceeding as planned.

“While there is still significant work ahead, we have a clear path to completion and remain focused on creating two companies with the strategic flexibility, financial strength, and leadership to compete and grow independently. We have tremendous confidence in the future of both companies,” Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said on the earnings call.

Comcast benefits from ‘The Odyssey’ success

The success of director Christopher Nolan’s latest film, “The Odyssey,” will create tough comps for Universal Studios next year.

The blockbuster has grossed nearly $1.9 billion worldwide since its July opening, including $625 million at the domestic box office and another $1.16 billion internationally. That success helped push the studio’s theatrical revenue 77% higher in the third quarter to $1.13 billion.

Related: Comcast adds new service to internet plans as customers leave

‘The Odyssey’ is Universal’s highest-grossing film of all time, helping the movie studio become the first one to surpass $5 billion at the global box office this year. However, overall theatrical revenue decreased in the third quarter year over year “primarily due to the timing of when content was made available by our television studios,” Comcast said.

Peacock posts a profit

That television studio also helped Peacock, its streaming service, report a quarterly profit for just the second time since it launched in 2020.

Peacock recorded third-quarter EBITDA of $261 million on total revenue of $1.8 billion. The streaming platform maintained 48 million subscribers, which was flat from the previous quarter but up 17% year over year.

Peacock had record-high viewership in the quarter thanks in part to the FIFA World Cup, whose final games were broadcast on Peacock and Telemundo, which is also owned by NBCUniversal, at the start of the quarter.

Overall media revenue rose 13% year over year to $5.4 billion while the overall content and experiences unit, which includes theme parks, film and movie studios, saw a 6.5% year over year increase. However, independently, Comcast’s theme park revenue fell 4.4% year over year to $2.6 billion.

Comcast is doing the splits

Comcast’s plan to spin off the rest of its entertainment division after Versant Media Group, which owns the portfolio of cable TV networks and digital assets spun off by Comcast, started trading publicly in January.

Versant is the home of MS Now (formerly MSNBC), CNBC, Golf Channel, USA, E!, Syfy and Oxygen, as well as the websites Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and Sports Engine.

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Now, Comcast expects the spin-off of NBCUniversal and Sky Media to be completed in 2027. NBCUniversal, the new separate company, will consist of Sky, Universal Film and TV Studios, NBC, Telemundo networks, Peacock, and Bravo.

Comcast expects to retain a 19.9% stake in the new company for up to one year after the spin-off is complete. Comcast shareholders will own shares in both Comcast and NBCUniversal and Cavanagh will run the new business while former Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis will become Comcast CEO.

Related: Comcast CFO warns of a rising threat as internet customers depart

That quiet drift is now the central problem at Netflix Inc. (NFLX). Churn improved year over year in the U.S. and beat the company’s forecast, according to its third-quarter shareholder letter. Yet the same letter concedes investors are worried about slow growth in viewing hours.

Netflix answered with a shakeup. It cut about 6% of its workforce this month, Reuters reported. It also named former Walt Disney Television chairman Peter Rice as chief content officer, replacing Bela Bajaria.

Third-quarter revenue then rose 12% to $12.9 billion, the slowest growth in nearly three years, Reuters reported. Netflix also trimmed its 2026 ad revenue forecast to about $2.7 billion from $3 billion, citing slower ad feature rollouts.

Also read: Netflix content, layoffs cause fund manager to sell shares before earnings

Jessica Reif Ehrlich still rates the stock a Buy, according to a BofA Securities research note shared with TheStreet. In the report, titled “Not changing the debate,” she cut her price target to $90 from $105. She wrote that the quarter “did little to change the narrative.”

BofA’s lower target prices in patience, not profits

BofA now values Netflix at about 20 times its 2027 EBITDA estimate, a measure of operating profit, down from 23 times. BofA’s 2027 EBITDA forecast fell only about 3%, to $19.5 billion.

The bank expects nearly the same profits but thinks investors will pay less for them. I read that as the most honest line in the note. It prices in time, not failure.

Waiting gets harder when the scoreboard shrinks. Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers in 2025, Reuters noted. Its second-quarter letter said its detailed viewing report will come out once a year starting in 2027.

Free video is pulling viewing time away from Netflix

Members watched more than 97 billion hours in the first half of 2026, up just 2%, according to that letter. Pivotal Research analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak warned that short-form video is doing to streaming what streaming did to pay TV, Variety reported.

That puts the burden on Rice’s slate. Live events take just over 5% of 2026 content spending but only about 1% of viewing hours, Netflix said in the same letter. Series and films still carry almost everything.

U.S. and Canada revenue grew 11% in the third quarter, down from 17% a year earlier, according to the latest letter. That region still delivers about 44% of revenue, which is why BofA says management wants bigger hits there.

Ads raise the stakes because advertisers buy viewing time. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged that Netflix “could do better,” Reuters reported.

More Netflix:

• Why Goldman Sachs still backs Netflix despite falling viewership
• Wall Street bank backs Netflix despite U.S. drift to YouTube
• Down 46%, is Netflix a buy now?

Wall Street is split on how long to wait

Shares fell 5.3% on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, according to StockAnalysis. The stock had already lost more than 26% this year before that drop, Reuters reported.

Needham’s Laura Martin downgraded the stock to Hold, warning that “rising competition drives margin compression and slowing revenue growth,” according to Seeking Alpha. Deutsche Bank’s Bryan Kraft countered that the market’s reaction was overly punitive. One fund manager had already sold his shares before earnings.

The 52 analysts tracked by StockAnalysis rate Netflix a Buy on average, with a mean target of $91.39. Its data also show two Strong Sell ratings, up from none in August.

The latest calls, all from Wednesday, October 21, 2026, according to StockAnalysis:

• Buy, with a $90 target cut from $105: Bank of America Securities, Jessica Reif Ehrlich.
• Hold, with a $65 target cut from $70: Pivotal Research, Jeffrey Wlodarczak.
• Sell, with a $57 target maintained: Wells Fargo, Steven Cahall.

BofA thinks Netflix’s reset has room to run

Reif Ehrlich’s case rests on scale and cash. She calls the valuation undemanding for a service with more than 300 million paying subscribers, trading below 20 times earnings. She adds that Netflix has “repeatedly demonstrated an ability to adapt.”

Netflix bought back a record $4.8 billion of stock in the third quarter, according to its letter. This year’s $10.8 billion in repurchases has outrun $9.5 billion of free cash flow, its cash flow statement shows. Buybacks can steady a share price, but they cannot buy back viewers.

For subscribers, the reset should show up on screen before it shows up in the stock. The letter promises NFL games on Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Day, plus a Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua fight.

BofA’s verdict is a patient buy. The bull case says a cheap stock rerates once Rice’s slate lands. The bear case says viewers keep drifting to free video, and the discount deepens.

Streaming’s first era rewarded whoever signed up the most people. The next one rewards whoever keeps them watching, and Rice’s first slate is where that test begins.

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On Thursday, November 19, 2026, Rockstar Games releases Grand Theft Auto VI, and this time the grown-ups are the ones sneaking off. Up to 1.5 million Americans could skip work that day, according to an estimate reported by the International Business Times. It puts the cost at roughly $1 billion in lost output.

Also read: GameStop makes surprising PS5 Pro pricing move before GTA 6 launch

Bosses lose the day, and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO), Rockstar’s parent company, collects the money. Preorders tracked by Sensor Tower have already brought in about $630 million, according to Insider Gaming.

Red Dead Redemption 2 set the bar GTA 6 has to clear

I have played every Grand Theft Auto since, and almost every other Rockstar game. The one I keep going back to is Red Dead Redemption 2, released on Friday, October 26, 2018.

Eight years later, its world still feels more alive than most newer games. Your horse learns to trust you, your beard grows out, and wolves hunt deer whether or not you are watching.

That is the bar GTA 6 has to clear when it returns players to a modern-day Vice City. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that it is almost certainly the most expensive video game ever made. Analysts he cited expect more than $3 billion in revenue in its first four months.

Fans are paying $99.99 for a game they haven’t played

Preorders opened on Thursday, June 25, 2026, with a $79.99 Standard Edition and a $99.99 Ultimate Edition, according to Quartz. By mid-August, about 89% of preorders were for the pricier edition, according to Sensor Tower figures reported by TechRadar.

Sensor Tower’s Karl Kontus said he had “never seen a 90% premium share before.” A $79.99 base price makes $99.99 feel like a small upgrade instead of a $100 purchase, a tactic retailers call price anchoring.

The premium mix appears to have held. Average revenue per preorder comes to roughly $98, based on Sensor Tower’s October count of 6.45 million copies.

Take-Two Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick has called the game “an incredible bargain as experiences go,” according to an earnings call transcript.

The $1 billion sick day is shakier than it sounds

The paper trail behind the headline number is thin. The first IBT report tied it to José García Montalvo, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University. A second IBT report said the 1.5 million figure should not be attributed to him, and that no national study backs it.

The reported inputs do not add up, either. The first report cited about $70,000 in yearly output per worker. Spread over roughly 260 workdays, 1.5 million absences would cost closer to $400 million.

Some workers are saving paid leave for the launch, The Wall Street Journal reported. A planned day off is less a productivity shock than a holiday nobody printed on the calendar.

After Rockstar’s second delay, r/GTA6 users on Reddit joked they would be on Medicare by launch, GamesRadar reported. Thirteen years of waiting has turned a product release into something closer to a global event.

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Wall Street is still pricing Take-Two with caution

Take-Two’s market value sits near $38.9 billion, down about 19% over the past year, according to StockAnalysis. The shares trade closer to their 52-week low of $187.63 than their high of $265.94.

In August, Take-Two kept its full-year outlook at $8 billion to $8.2 billion in net bookings, the value of games and content sold. Analysts had expected $8.86 billion, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.

The 29 analysts tracked by StockAnalysis rate Take-Two a Strong Buy, with an average 12-month target of $286.44. Reaching that target would lift Take-Two’s market value to about $53.6 billion, roughly $15 billion above today’s level.

Sony Group Corp. (SONY) has a stake too. About 74% of tracked preorders came on PlayStation 5, according to Insider Gaming, so most players will start the game on Sony’s console.

What comes next:

• The final earnings report before launch arrives Monday, November 9, 2026, according to StockAnalysis.
• Boxed copies reach stores on Thursday, November 12, 2026, for pre-loading, but they contain a download code rather than a disc, according to Variety.
• GTA 6 launches as a single-player game, with an online mode expected in 2027, Bloomberg reported. GTA V also launched without GTA Online in 2013, and today’s version still brings in an estimated $500 million a year.
• A PC version is expected in 2027, according to reports cited by Forbes.

Meanwhile, Forbes’ Paul Tassi wrote on Monday, October 19, 2026, that AI coding tools now let players rewrite games. He argued Rockstar may lose control of parts of GTA 6.

His example hit close to home. A new fan mod added a full revenge system to Red Dead Redemption 2, where characters remember where Arthur Morgan wounded them.

Mods kept GTA V alive for years, Tassi noted. Faster mods could stretch GTA 6’s life on PC, or give players for free what Rockstar would rather sell.

That long tail is where Take-Two makes its money. GTA V has sold more than 230 million units, the company said in August. Recurrent spending, the money players keep paying after launch, made up 84% of net bookings last quarter, according to its earnings release.

November 19 will show how many people call off work. The online launch in 2027 will show how long they stay, and that will decide what Take-Two is worth.

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That’s because while I rarely use the streaming service, aside from sometimes watching a stand-up comedy special, it seems like you need to have Netflix just in case they produce something worth watching. In addition, when I travel, my wife has watched a number of series, so it’s probably a good value for us.

Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters spoke about price increases during his company’s third-quarter earnings call.

He made it clear that he thinks his company delivers enough to customers that they won’t mind price hikes. Peters noted that members have responded well when the streaming service has raised prices.

“Across all market types where we’ve done price changes, the member response, you mentioned churn engagement usually isn’t really impacted by these things. But that member response is consistent with prior price changes and our expectations,” he said.

His next comments, while they didn’t directly call for a price increase, certainly suggested that the company thinks one would be justified.

Netflix hints at a price increase

Peters made it clear that he thinks Netflix offers strong value to members.

“Again, we think that this is a strong indicator of the value that we’re delivering to members as measured by the quality, the quantity, the variety of viewing that is healthy. Maybe just one also, an external reference point for that value, take the U.S. as an example. Netflix subscribers are paying the least per hour of viewing compared to other SVOD offerings in the country,” he shared.

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That comment suggests that Netflix has at least considered raising prices.

Peters went on to provide further justification for why Netflix could be charging more.

“In some cases, they would have to pay more than double per hour for a competitive service. We think that’s a really good marker of how much value we are delivering per price,” he added.

Peters also made it clear that his comments were not just about the U.S.

“Also note that we saw continued healthy retention in every region, churn globally in the U.S. improved year-over-year, so better than forecast. Those things also reinforce the signs of that value and make us increasingly confident in that,” he added.

What does Netflix cost now?

Netflix offers multiple tiers.

• Standard with ads: $8.99 / month
• Standard: $19.99 / month
  • Add 1 extra member for $7.99 / month with ads or $9.99 / month without ads
• Premium: $26.99 / month
• Add up to 2 extra members for $7.99 each / month with ads or $9.99 each / month without ads
  • Source: Netflix

Netflix has also been very active in policing members sharing accounts.

“You cannot share your Netflix account outside of your household, which is a collection of devices connected to the internet at the main residence where you watch Netflix. People who are not in your household can be added as an extra member,” the company shared.

When Netflix does raise prices for existing members, the impact isn’t immediate.

An email is sent one month before the billing date on which a price will increase to notify current members before a rate adjustment takes effect, according to the Netflix Help Center.

The company also notes that plans and pricing may adjust due to “Service improvements, local market changes, inflation, taxes.”

Netflix raises prices regularly

Netflix last raised prices in March. That followed a January 2025 price increase.

RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino thinks Netflix is getting ready for another U.S. price increase.

“Netflix has figured out that it can raise prices and most people will stick around. That’s a luxury very few companies have. They just raised prices, so I wouldn’t expect another increase tomorrow, but I’d be surprised if they don’t test customers again next year,” he told TheStreet.

The streaming leader has a deep history of raising prices.

“Netflix has been raising prices for 15 years, in markets all over the world, and its annual revenue has grown every single year through all of them,” The Motley Fool’s Daniel Sparks wrote in September after the company raised prices on its lowest-cost tier in the United Kingdom.

Peters reiterated that Netflix has been successful raising prices in the past.

“The ultimate determinant of are we delivering that value is the reaction to price changes. Those recent price changes that we did, including in the United States, have gone well,” he added.

A history of Netflix prices increases

As you can see from the list below, Netflix has no fixed schedule for raising prices. Peters, it should be noted, did not directly say the company was planning a price increase.

His comments instead suggested that customers have historically tolerated increases well and appeared to lay the groundwork to justify an increase.

• 2011: Netflix’s streaming plan cost $7.99 per month.
• May 2014: Netflix raised the U.S. Standard plan from $7.99 to $8.99 per month.
• October 2015: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $8.99 to $9.99 per month.
• October 2017: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $9.99 to $10.99 per month.
• January 2019: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $10.99 to $12.99 per month.
• October 2020: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $12.99 to $13.99 per month.
• January 2022: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $13.99 to $15.49 per month.
• January 2025: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $15.49 to $17.99 per month.
• March 2026: Netflix raised the Standard plan from $17.99 to $19.99 per month.
  • Sources: Netflix’s 2017 SEC filing documents earlier increases, CableTV.com

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The comic book publisher has reportedly canceled retailer orders for four upcoming deluxe hardcover collections from its popular Absolute Universe series, according to an Oct. 20 report from Bleeding Cool.

The books were originally scheduled for release between April and June 2027.

According to Bleeding Cool, comic book distributor Lunar Distribution has withdrawn the four hardcover titles and canceled existing orders placed by comic book stores. However, the books remain available for preorder through some major retailers, including Target, with later release dates.

DC has not publicly explained the cancellations or confirmed a revised release schedule.

Read more: Monopoly maker leaving Rhode Island after a century, more than 500 jobs at risk

DC Comics cancels orders for 4 hardcover collections

The affected books, previously advertised in DC’s publisher-issued solicitation catalogs, include:

• “Absolute Batman: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1:” Originally scheduled for April 27, 2027.
• “Absolute Batman: The Covers:” Originally scheduled for April 27, 2027.
• “Absolute Wonder Woman: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1:” Originally scheduled for May 25, 2027.
• “Absolute Superman: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1:” Originally scheduled for June 29, 2027.

Now both Batman collections have release dates of Aug. 24, 2027, while the Wonder Woman edition has shifted to Aug. 31. The status of “Absolute Superman: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1” remains unclear.

Although Bleeding Cool reported that the hardcover’s Amazon listing had disappeared, the book remains listed at specialty retailers, including Panel Bound Comics, which displays its originally scheduled June 29, 2027 release date.

This date was also listed by Absolute Superman writer Jason Aaron in his August newsletter.

However, comic book tracking site League of Comic Geeks now shows a release date of Oct. 12, 2027, suggesting the Superman collection could face a longer delay than the Batman and Wonder Woman editions.

DC has not publicly confirmed the revised publication date or explained the reported cancellation of comic-shop orders.

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Target currently lists “Absolute Batman: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1” for preorder at $49.99, with a suggested retail price of $59.99 and an Aug. 24, 2027 release date.

The retailer’s “Absolute Wonder Woman” deluxe listing also shows a $59.99 suggested retail price, although customers can preorder it for $49.99.

The deluxe editions were originally advertised at $49.99, raising questions about whether their official prices are increasing. DC has not publicly confirmed a price increase.

The order cancellations have also created confusion among collectors.

In a Reddit discussion, one customer shared a cancellation notice for an “Absolute Batman” preorder placed through Discount Comic Book Service. Another collector reported that Cheap Graphic Novels requested an additional $6 to retain an existing preorder rather than canceling it.

These experiences suggest customers may be encountering different outcomes depending on where they ordered.

DC Comics continues expanding its Absolute Universe

The reported cancellations come despite strong demand for DC’s Absolute Universe, a publishing initiative launched in October 2024 that reimagines familiar superheroes in alternate realities.

In a February 2026 announcement, DC said the series was a commercial success, with early collections returning to print amid growing readership. The publisher also expanded the lineup with Absolute Catwoman and Absolute Green Arrow.

More recently, DC announced “Absolute Justice,” a five-issue limited series bringing together Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and other Absolute Universe superheroes.

The company said the upcoming project would not interrupt its ongoing Absolute comic book series.

DC also offered exclusive hardcover editions of its first Absolute Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman volumes during New York Comic Con earlier this month. Those are separate from the affected deluxe collections.

The publishing changes come shortly after DC became part of Skydance Corporation following Paramount’s Oct. 6 acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

For now, collectors will have to await further clarification from DC on when the deluxe hardcovers will become available.

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This could affect hundreds of its employees, who face job losses just as the holiday season peaks.

Hasbro has issued notices affecting approximately 587 employees at its longtime headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as it prepares to relocate its operations to Boston.

However, the numbers are not yet confirmed.

The affected employees have been offered continued employment at its new Boston location, with work scheduled to begin on Jan. 4, 2027.

According to a WARN notice filed with Rhode Island, employees who do not complete the transfer are expected to lose their jobs beginning Dec. 24, 2026.

The uncertainty comes as the toy and gaming giant moves ahead with a transformation that has already included thousands of job reductions in recent years.

Which Hasbro employees are affected?

A review of the filing’s eight-page attachment shows 343 separate job-title entries covering the 587 employees.

The positions span product design, marketing, finance, legal operations, engineering, supply chain management, and other corporate functions.

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Among the larger groups listed are:

• 12 associate managers in global brand development and marketing
• 11 senior managers in global brand development and marketing
• 10 global planners
• 8 associate principal product designers
• 8 senior accountants
• 7 senior product designers

The notice also includes senior leadership positions, including chief financial officer, chief operating officer, chief supply chain officer, and various executive vice president and vice president roles.

These employees, however, are covered by the relocation notice and are not necessarily facing dismissal. The filing also does not identify who plans to transfer or which positions will ultimately become vacant.

More details may be available closer to the layoff date of Dec. 24.

The employees are not represented by a union and do not have bumping rights, according to the notice.

Why is Hasbro leaving Rhode Island?

Hasbro’s headquarters relocation has been in development for more than a year.

In September 2025, the company announced plans to move its Rhode Island operations to 400 Summer Street in Boston’s Seaport District.

The toy manufacturing company has been in Pawtucket for nearly 100 years since its shift in 1926, making the move more than a simple relocation.

Now, the new Boston location will serve as the primary headquarters for its toys, board games, and licensing businesses, as well as most corporate services.

The shift is also a part of the toy retailer’s Playing to Win strategy, under which Hasbro aims to expand engagement and increase its community. More precisely, it aims to grow from its current community of 500 million, which includes kids, families, and fans, to “over 750 million by 2027.”

Hasbro said the move would help it attract talent, accelerate innovation, and collaborate more effectively with business partners.

The company originally said at least 700 full-time employees were expected to transition from Rhode Island to Boston.

The latest WARN filing covers 587 employees, although it does not explain the difference between the two figures. 

The move also marks the end of an era for Pawtucket, where Hasbro has maintained deep roots for more than a century.

In its 2025 annual report, the company said it intended to sell its existing 343,000-square-foot headquarters and an adjacent 23,000-square-foot building after relocating.

Hasbro also acknowledged a significant business risk associated with the move.

The company warned that employees unwilling to relocate could leave, potentially resulting in lost institutional knowledge, increased hiring costs, and operational disruption.

Hasbro is not alone in making a major headquarters move. 

Samsung Electronics America recently relocated its U.S. headquarters from New Jersey to Plano, Texas, affecting 739 positions, as TheStreet previously reported.

While many employees were offered relocation opportunities, others lost their jobs. Samsung has not publicly disclosed the final number of layoffs resulting from the move.

Hasbro’s latest job warnings come despite stronger sales

The latest relocation notices come against a complicated financial backdrop.

Hasbro has already undertaken substantial workforce reductions as part of its business transformation.

In December 2023, the company confirmed approximately 1,100 additional job cuts, following roughly 800 earlier reductions.

In June 2025, Reuters reported that Hasbro was cutting approximately 3% of its workforce, affecting around 150 positions, as the company navigated higher costs and changing market conditions.

And Hasbro’s most recent financial results show that parts of its business are performing strongly.

In the second quarter of 2026, the company reported:

• Revenue growth of 16% from a year earlier
• Operating profit of approximately $253 million
• A 27% increase in Wizards and Digital Gaming revenue
• A 5% increase in Consumer Products revenue

Magic: The Gathering, Hasbro’s popular fantasy-themed collectible trading card game, generated more than $500 million in quarterly revenue for the first time in its three-decade history. 

The milestone was driven in part by the game’s Marvel-themed releases, which helped fuel Hasbro’s stronger second-quarter performance and supported its decision to raise its full-year financial outlook.

Looking ahead, Hasbro is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results on Oct. 20, which could be an opportunity for management to discuss the transition.

For now, the company’s move to Boston promises a new chapter for some of America’s most recognizable toy and game brands.

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The ascent has been rewarding for early shareholders, given Netflix’s stock price has gained a remarkable 60,000% since its 2002 IPO.

Yet, competition is fiercer than ever, and cash-strapped consumers are looking closely at their budgets. What once felt like a “must-have” line item on my monthly budget increasingly looks less so, and I’m not alone.

According to fund manager Chris Versace, membership churn is rising at Netflix, hampering its business. The cause, in Versace’s view, is that Netflix is suffering from a content problem, and that won’t necessarily be fixed by Netflix’s decision this week to replace its Chief Content Officer ahead of next week’s earnings.

Netflix content fails to inspire ‘must-see’ confidence

The ability to maintain and grow subscribership is directly the result of creating and offering engaging content that goes viral.

“Consumers will move for the content they want to consume and deem to be “must see,” wrote Versace in a TheStreet Pro post. “The upcoming line-up at Netflix doesn’t have much of that.”

The returning series releasing in October are franchises with declining viewership, and each season seems to pull in a smaller audience than the last.

Consider the, perhaps ironically named, show “Nobody Wants This.” Season 3 is released on Oct. 22. Season 2 opened with 8.6 million views in four days — solid, but down 17% from Season 1.

Also read: Netflix faces unexpected challenge as streaming prices soar, customer interest shifts

Others have also seen declining viewership with each season, including “Lupin” and “The Diplomat” (one of my favorites on the calendar). Netflix’s release of Ben Affleck’s “Animals” has put up strong numbers, but critics have largely panned it.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Animals gets a 31% rating on the Tomatometer and 39% on the Popcornmeter. Hardly inspiring.

Netflix’s content calendar lands as Versace points out that member churn is rising, according to Apptopia data.

“Netflix’s U.S. churn picked up in Q3 2026. For the prior three quarters, that level of churn had been running around 8% according to its findings, but through July to September of this year, that figure crossed into double digits,” wrote Versace. “Apptopia’s data also shows that Netflix’s Average Time Spent per Daily Active User in U.S. has drifted lower in recent quarters.”

Netflix hires new content executive

Versace has been tracking stocks since the 1990s and manages a multimillion-dollar portfolio for TheStreet Pro. Netflix has been a core holding in that portfolio, but Versace wrote earlier this week that he had downgraded the stock and was looking to sell into strength.

Netflix announced it is replacing Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, who spent 10 years at Netflix, with producer and former Fox executive Peter Rice, effective Oct. 26. Following the announcement, Versace decided to sell Netflix entirely before earnings are released on Oct. 20.

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“Peter is one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry. His business acumen is sharp, his talent relationships are exceptionally strong, and his experience across TV and film is deep and broad,” said Netflix CEO Sarandos.

Versace is less-than-convinced by Sarandos assurances.

“The naming of Rice, appears, at least on paper, to be a questionable choice given the poor reception for The Social Reckoning and his lack of streaming experience,” said Versace.

The Social Reckoning has grossed about $9.8 million worldwide since its release on Oct. 9, 2026, hardly a barnburner.

“We have to wonder, given the talent out there, if this was the best Netflix could do,” Versace added. “Our concern is that while Rice has the paper pedigree, he lacks the chops needed to reignite Netflix’s content slate that is central to driving and maintaining subscriptions and attracting advertising dollars.”

Fund manager sells Netflix ahead of earnings report

Versace’s decision to sell Netflix entirely from his portfolio lands only days before the streaming company is expected to release its third-quarter results.

Those results could move the stock up or down, but Versace doesn’t think the risk is worth waiting to see how it all plays out.

“We’ve seen how the market punishes stocks for only missing quarterly expectations or expected guidance by a hair. That implies more downside risk for the shares is a possibility we can’t ignore,” said Versace. “Reviewing Netflix’s recent earnings track record, it isn’t the clear beat-and-raise company that it once was. Heading into next week’s earnings report, consensus EPS figures for 2027 call for 5%-6% EPS growth.”

Versace is concerned about the timing of the content team shake-up ahead of the release, especially following word that Netflix plans to lay off 6,000 workers.

“Factoring in the timing of the headcount announcement raises questions over the ability of the underlying business to achieve that level of growth. In other words, the timing of that announcement some two weeks after wrapping the Q3 2026 quarter raises questions,” said Versace.

“The bottom-line is there are better opportunities to recover the ground we’ve lost with NFLX shares in companies with stronger competitive positions and better growth prospects,” he said.

Related: Netflix faces unexpected challenge as streaming prices soar, customer interest shifts

That reach is exactly what Fox has been missing. The company has thrived on live football and cable news, but those still mostly reach you through a shrinking cable bundle.

Fox Corp. (FOXA) agreed in June to buy Roku for $160 a share, valuing the streaming platform at about $22 billion, Variety reported. Fox already generated $17.13 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026, according to TheWrap, helped by the World Cup and a record quarter at its free streaming service, Tubi.

“This transaction will bolster our position in connected TV distribution and advertising,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s Aug. 6 fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call.

Still, Wall Street was split on whether Fox overpaid. One of its biggest skeptics just changed its mind.

According to a Bank of America research report dated Oct. 16 and reviewed by TheStreet, the Roku deal “fundamentally changes the strategic and financial narrative” for Fox, and the bank now sees more than 30% upside in the stock.

Why Bank of America flipped from bear to buyer

BofA had rated Fox Underperform since February. Its worry was that the NFL would push for an early, far pricier TV rights deal, and that Fox had no real streaming answer as more viewers cut the cord.

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Both concerns have eased. Murdoch said on the August earnings call that Fox doesn’t expect changes to its NFL terms “until the 2030 season,” and the Roku deal hands Fox a ready-made streaming platform.

“Roku addresses this existential question,” wrote BofA analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich in the note, titled “One billion reasons to love the Roku deal; upgrade Fox to Buy.” She raised her price target to $85 from $54.

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That target sits above the $82 JPMorgan set when it upgraded the stock on Aug. 14, Finviz reported. Fox shares closed at $62.21 on Oct. 16, below the $68.14 they traded at before the bell on the day of that JPMorgan upgrade.

Here’s the deal math for Roku shareholders. Each Roku share gets $96 in cash plus 0.9693 Fox shares, so at Fox’s current price the package is worth about $156 per share, a bit under the $160 headline, by my math.

What the deal could mean for your Roku screen

For viewers, the biggest change is likely to be ads. BofA estimates Roku sells only about 36% of its available video ad slots, compared with likely more than 60% at Fox’s Tubi.

Each one-point gain in that fill rate is worth about $80 million in revenue, the bank calculated. In plain terms, Fox makes more money when more of those empty ad breaks on The Roku Channel get filled.

BofA laid out in its research note where it sees the extra revenue coming from:

• About $310 million from selling more Roku video ads, partly by bundling them with scarce Fox inventory such as NFL games.
• Roughly $150 million from bundling Fox One, Fox’s streaming service, into Roku subscriptions, assuming one million new subscribers at a lower price.
• About $75 million from home-screen advertising, including sports hubs such as Roku’s NFL Zone.

That bundling piece could matter for your monthly bill. If Fox One shows up as a discounted add-on through Roku, you might pay less than buying it on its own, though BofA’s numbers assume Fox earns less per subscriber, too.

Given that backdrop, it’s easy to see why Reif Ehrlich thinks the market is underrating the deal. She called her $530 million revenue estimate a base case and put her bull case above $1 billion, which gives the note its title.

The NFL bill and a Walmart problem still loom

The NFL hasn’t gone away. Notwithstanding Murdoch’s apparent confidence during the earnings call that there would be no new deal before 2030, BofA estimates that a renewal at 1.5 times today’s annual fee before the 2027 season would cut Fox’s fiscal 2028 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by about 15%.

That’s less painful than the roughly 22% hit the bank modeled in February. Roku’s extra cash flow, which BofA puts at about $1 billion in 2027, gives Fox more room to absorb a bigger check.

Much will likely depend, however, on Walmart. The retailer now owns TV manufacturer Vizio, whose TVs come equipped for streaming. BofA notes that Roku’s largest distributor, which is presumably Walmart, fell from more than 40% of Roku sales in 2023 to nearly 20% in 2025.

BofA even titled its risk section “Walmart looms as a Death Star.” I’d also note the bank itself questions why Roku agreed to sell if its prospects were so bright.

For your portfolio, Fox is a modest income stock, with a dividend yield of about 0.9%, or roughly $90 a year on a $10,000 stake. The real payoff depends on whether Fox can turn Roku’s reach into ad dollars.

Reif Ehrlich thinks it can. “Ultimately, we believe the stock now offers an attractive setup,” she wrote.

Related: Analyst says Fox’s Roku risk may be mispriced

And as streaming prices have climbed over the years, keeping up with your favorite content has become increasingly expensive.

Now, two major streaming services are headed toward a significant change that could alter how millions of consumers watch and pay for entertainment.

After much drama, HBO Max and Paramount+ are finally expected to become part of a single streaming service following the completion of Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6.

The newly combined entertainment company, Skydance, plans to eventually unify its streaming platforms, including HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+.

However, the company has not announced the combined service’s name, pricing, or launch date.This leaves customers asking: Will combining streaming services actually save them money, or simply create another expensive subscription?

For now, existing subscribers do not need to make any changes.

Also read: New rule makes it easier to cancel subscriptions, get money back

HBO Max and Paramount+ confirm changes for subscribers

In an Oct. 6 announcement, Skydance confirmed that it had completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing together some of Hollywood’s biggest entertainment brands.

The combined company now controls a portfolio spanning HBO, Warner Bros., Paramount, CBS, CNN, Nickelodeon, Discovery, and major sports programming. Its streaming businesses have more than 200 million subscriptions across platforms.

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The company also confirmed plans to improve its direct-to-consumer streaming products, which it said would eventually become one service.

But the transition won’t happen immediately.

In an updated HBO Max customer FAQ, the company clarified that currently there will be no immediate changes to the HBO Max or Paramount+ apps, subscriptions, content libraries, or pricing.

Paramount+ has issued similar guidance, telling customers they can continue using their existing subscriptions.

This means customers who currently pay for both services should continue to expect separate subscriptions and charges unless the company announces otherwise.

There is also no confirmed timeline for transferring accounts, combining content libraries, or introducing a new app.

Skydance increased Discovery + subscription price

The uncertainty surrounding the combined platform comes at a time when consumers are already increasingly questioning the cost of their streaming subscriptions.

According to Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends report, the average U.S. household subscribing to streaming video services spends $69 per month.

The survey found that:

• 73% of consumers are frustrated by rising entertainment subscription prices
• 61% said they would likely cancel their favorite streaming service following a $5 monthly price increase
• 68% of streaming subscribers have at least one advertising-supported plan, up from 46% in 2024

These findings highlight the challenge facing Skydance.

Combining HBO Max and Paramount+ could offer customers a broader selection of programming, but convincing them to pay more for it may prove difficult.

While this decision may be pending, at least one of its streaming services has already seen a price hike.

Discovery+, another streaming service owned by Skydance, increased its monthly subscription prices in October. Its ad-supported plan rose from $5.99 to $6.99, while its ad-free offering increased from $9.99 to $11.99.

The increases took effect immediately for new subscribers, with existing customers scheduled to see them beginning Nov. 12.

How much HBO Max and Paramount+ subscribers currently pay

The biggest uncertainty involves subscription pricing.

Streaming services have become substantially more expensive over the past decade, as previously detailed in TheStreet’s comparison of Netflix and other major streaming platforms.

And the cost of subscribing to both HBO Max and Paramount+ already adds up.

Here is what customers currently pay for the services individually.

For someone subscribing to the cheapest plans on both services, the total comes to $19.98 per month, or $239.76 annually.

A customer paying for both HBO Max Standard and Paramount+ Premium pays $32.48 per month, or $389.76 per year.

And subscribing to the highest-priced plans from both platforms costs $36.98 per month, equivalent to $443.76 annually.

These figures can help compare any combined subscription Skydance introduces.

If the company offers access to both content libraries at a lower price than customers currently pay separately, it could create savings for households already subscribing to both.

However, customers who currently pay for only one platform could end up spending more if the new offering replaces cheaper standalone options.

Skydance has not indicated whether separate subscriptions will remain available or whether the combined service will introduce new advertising-supported and premium tiers.

Why Skydance wants to combine HBO Max and Paramount+

For Skydance, the merger is about more than bringing popular television shows and movies under one roof.

The company is targeting at least $6 billion in annualized cost savings within three years, largely through technology integration, purchasing efficiencies, marketing, and reductions in overlapping operations.

And combining these operations could reduce duplication while giving Skydance a larger content library to compete against Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video.

The company says its expanded portfolio includes franchises ranging from “Harry Potter” and “Top Gun” to “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The White Lotus.” It also brings together sporting rights from CBS Sports and TNT Sports.

This could make it more attractive to some customers, but it might help to remember that financial savings for the company do not automatically translate into cheaper subscription prices.

Skydance is also managing the substantial financing obligations associated with the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.

The company aims to reduce leverage and generate more than $10 billion in free cash flow by 2030, creating pressure to improve profitability while continuing to invest in programming.

For now, all we can do is sit back and wait for new announcements. Until then, keep enjoying your latest watch.

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That has been the quiet weakness of every screen-time fix so far. A limit on one app pushes the scrolling onto the next one, and your family’s evenings go with it.

For most households, that next app is easy to name. Roughly nine in 10 U.S. teens use YouTube, and 61% are on TikTok every day, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 teens published Dec. 9, 2025.

In August, Meta Platforms (META) agreed to the toughest teen rules any major social platform has accepted. Facebook and Instagram are set to carry a default two-hour daily cap for users under 18 and a block on the apps between midnight and 6 a.m. Meta itself has said teens who hit a limit on one app simply move to another.

Now a group of family advocates wants the window closed too.

The American Principles Project (APP), a national pro-family advocacy group, sent a coalition letter urging TikTok, Snapchat, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) YouTube to match Meta’s protections, according to a statement from the group obtained by FOX Business.

Inside the coalition letter sent to TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube

The letter asks the three platforms to voluntarily adopt the same safeguards Meta accepted, at least until broader federal protections arrive, FOX Business reported on Oct. 13. That list covers daily time limits, quiet hours during school and overnight, parental control over algorithmic feeds and autoplay, hidden likes by default and age verification.

The group’s pitch is about leakage. If Instagram cuts your teen off at two hours, nothing stops the next two hours from landing on TikTok.

Read more: Zuckerberg says Meta’s AI bet only fails if all AI fails

“A standard has been set, and the challenge issued. The stakes could not be higher,” the APP letter states. The signers argue that “an industry-wide standard will do far more for our children than adjustments to a handful of apps.”

APP said the letter was signed by leaders including:

• Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America LAC
• Craig DeRoche, president and CEO of Family Policy Alliance
• Jordan Sekulow, president and CEO of ACLJ Action
• Casey Stefanski, executive director of Digital Childhood Alliance
• Matthew Mehan, associate dean at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government
• 88 other signers

APP President Terry Schilling, a father of eight, framed it as a parent’s problem first. “I am playing serious defense here, and we need a lot more help,” he told FOX Business.

Why $5.3 billion of Meta’s settlement hinges on its rivals

Meta agreed to pay roughly $18 billion over 10 years, but only about $12.7 billion of that is guaranteed, according to a company statement.

The remaining $5.3 billion is released only if YouTube and TikTok adopt a one-hour daily limit, a night mode and age assurance measures, and make matching payments of their own.

There is a second trigger that matters more to your household. If rivals sign on, Meta’s own defaults get stricter, according to the company:

• The daily cap drops from two hours to one hour per app
• Night mode widens from midnight to 6 a.m. out to 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
• The time-limit and night-mode commitments stretch from five years to ten

In my reading of the deal, that clause is the part parents should care about most. The strictest version of these protections does not exist on any app yet, and it only switches on if Meta’s competitors join.

Snapchat’s parent, Snap (SNAP), is not named in the payment conditions in Meta’s statement. That means the coalition letter reaches further than the settlement itself does.

Neal Mohan has already brushed off joining the agreement

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan dismissed the idea of joining Meta’s agreement in September, saying the platform already has safety measures in place, CNN reported on Sept. 23. He pointed to an option that lets parents limit how long teens spend scrolling YouTube Shorts.

TikTok has not commented on calls to join Meta’s agreement, according to CNN. FOX Business said it reached out to TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat for comment on the coalition letter.

More Social Media:

• Why Meta’s $18B settlement may hit YouTube harder
• TikTok just paid a record price for failing kids’ privacy
• OpenAI picks perfect moment to childproof ChatGPT

That stance stands out to me. Last December, I reported that Mohan strictly limits his own children’s screen time at home, so his company’s resistance to a default cap for everyone else’s teens is a contrast parents will notice.

State officials say the pressure isn’t going away. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said it’s “just a matter of time” before TikTok, YouTube and Snap come on board, The National News Desk reported in August.

How to set your own screen-time limits on teen apps today

You don’t need to wait for a settlement to close the window. Most of the tools are free and already sitting in apps your teen uses:

• YouTube gives parents an option to cap how long teens spend on Shorts, the feature Mohan cited to CNN.
• TikTok offers Family Pairing, which links your account to your teen’s so you can manage screen time from your phone.
• Snapchat has Family Center, which lets you see who your teen is friends with and messaging.
• Your phone’s own settings, Apple’s Screen Time or Google’s Family Link, can set one cap across every app at once.

That last option is the only one that handles the app-hopping problem today. A single device-level limit doesn’t care which logo your teen taps.

What the Oct. 21 earnings report could show shareholders

If you own Meta shares, the settlement shows up soon. Meta said it expects to book a legal expense of about $10 billion in the third quarter tied to the agreement, a charge that wasn’t in the expense range it gave in July.

Meta will report third-quarter results after the market closes on Oct. 21, according to a company statement. For Alphabet and Snap shareholders, the open question is whether a similar deal eventually lands on their books, too.

Your teen’s screen time is now a negotiation among some of the biggest companies in tech. Until they settle it, the limit that works best is still the one you set at home.

More on Meta & its stock: 

• History of Meta: Company timeline, facts & milestones
• Is Meta Platforms a good long-term investment? 
• Does Meta pay dividends? Its yield and payouts explained
• Where is Meta Platforms’ headquarters? A look inside its Menlo Park home
• How many employees does Meta have in 2026? Its workforce, locations, & layoffs explained

I’ve taken that bait several times. In fact, two of my five streaming subscriptions are currently discounted. I’ll probably try canceling them again when those offers expire.

So, while signing up for a subscription can take just seconds, canceling one can sometimes feel like a part-time job.

Also read: Netflix faces unexpected challenge as streaming prices soar

From streaming services and gym memberships to food delivery and online shopping subscriptions, consumers have grown accustomed to recurring charges that can be much harder to stop than to start.

Some companies require customers to call a representative, navigate multiple cancellation screens, or repeatedly reject discounts before they can finally end a subscription.

And with Americans juggling multiple subscriptions, even a few unwanted charges can add up quickly.

Now, a new consumer protection rule is taking aim at these practices, potentially saving consumers millions of dollars and countless hours of frustration.

New York City’s Click-to-Cancel rule, which took effect October 1, requires businesses to make ending a subscription as easy as signing up for one.

Companies that violate the rule can face penalties starting at $525 per violation and may also be required to reimburse customers who were charged after trying to cancel.

The financial impact could be substantial.

An estimate from the Roosevelt Institute, cited by New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), suggests the rule could save adult consumers in the city up to $162.5 million and at least 600,000 hours annually.

And while the new regulation applies to New York City, the problems it addresses extend far beyond the city’s borders.

Subscription complaints have become a growing consumer problem

The frustration behind unwanted subscriptions is not limited to a handful of companies.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), complaints involving recurring subscriptions and negative-option marketing practices have increased considerably.

In 2024, the agency received an average of nearly 70 consumer complaints per day, compared with 42 in 2021.

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These complaints involve practices such as automatic renewals, confusing enrollment terms, and consumers being charged for services they thought they had canceled.

New York City’s consumer protection department received more than 100 complaints related to difficulties canceling subscriptions in 2025 alone.

During the city’s rulemaking process, one consumer described having to cancel a credit card to avoid further subscription charges after experiencing difficulties ending a service.

The problem has also resulted in major enforcement actions against nationally recognized businesses.

Amazon, Equinox and other major brands have faced subscription settlements

Over the past five years, federal and state regulators have pursued companies over subscription practices that allegedly made it difficult for consumers to stop recurring payments.

Some of these cases have resulted in substantial financial penalties, while others have required businesses to change how they enroll and retain customers.

Here are five prominent examples involving national brands.

Sources: Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General. 

The largest of these cases is Amazon.

In September 2025, Amazon agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC over allegations that it enrolled consumers in Prime without proper consent and made canceling memberships unnecessarily difficult.

The agreement included a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in consumer refunds.

In September 2026, the FTC announced expanded refund arrangements that increased the maximum consumer payment to $200 from $51.

What the new Click-to-Cancel rule changes for consumers

The biggest change is that consumers should not have to go through a complicated process to stop paying for something they no longer want.

Under New York City’s new rule, businesses offering covered automatic-renewal or continuous-service subscriptions must follow several requirements.

• Easy cancellations: Businesses must make canceling as easy as signing up, using the same channel. Even customers who enrolled in person must have an online cancellation option, such as a website or email.
• Clear subscription costs: Companies must disclose recurring prices, billing frequency, and cancellation deadlines or changes.
• Advance renewal reminders: Certain subscriptions with initial terms of at least one year and renewal terms of six months or longer require advance notice before the cancellation deadline.
• Price increase notifications: Companies must give customers advance notice of material subscription changes at least 5 days and no more than 30 days before the changes take effect.
• Free-trial protections: Free trials lasting more than a month must include advance notice before the first recurring payment, within the timeframe specified by the rule.
• No unreasonable cancellation barriers: Businesses cannot hang up on customers trying to cancel, provide misleading instructions, or unreasonably delay cancellation requests.

Importantly, companies may still offer customers discounts or incentives to stay subscribed, but those offers cannot obstruct or unreasonably delay cancellation.

The rule also addresses unsolicited merchandise sent as part of subscription arrangements.

When businesses ship products without obtaining the consumer’s affirmative consent, those items are treated as unconditional gifts under the regulation.

That means consumers cannot be forced to pay for the items or cover the cost of returning them.

The most significant provision concerns what happens when a business fails to properly process a cancellation.

Under Section 5-110.2 of New York City’s new regulation, businesses found in violation of the rule are liable for subscription charges imposed after a consumer’s first cancellation attempt.

However, the rule does not automatically guarantee a refund simply because someone chooses to cancel a subscription. Nor does it automatically eliminate otherwise lawful contractual obligations.

Subscription cancellation protections are expanding nationwide

New York City is not alone in cracking down on difficult subscription cancellations.

According to a September 2026 analysis by law firm Skadden, approximately 30 states have adopted some form of automatic-renewal or click-to-cancel legislation.

In 2026 alone, new or amended subscription laws took effect in states including Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland and Virginia.

These laws vary in requirements, including how much advance notice companies must provide before subscriptions renew.

For example, New York requires certain renewal notices 15 to 45 days before the cancellation deadline, while Florida requires them 30 to 60 days in advance, according to Skadden.

The growing number of state rules has become especially significant after a federal appeals court struck down the FTC’s nationwide Click-to-Cancel rule in July 2025 on procedural grounds.

For consumers, subscription cancellation protections still depend considerably on where they live.

New York City’s new regulation goes a step further than existing state law in certain respects, including requiring an online cancellation option even for subscriptions purchased in person.

That could make it easier for customers to end gym memberships and other recurring services without having to return to the location where they signed up.

How consumers can report difficult subscription cancellations

New York City consumers who encounter subscription problems can now submit complaints through the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

The city’s official Click-to-Cancel website allows consumers to report businesses that make cancellations difficult, delay requests, fail to disclose subscription terms, or continue sending unwanted products.

The department reviews complaints and may work with businesses and consumers to resolve disputes.

Consumers should consider keeping records of their cancellation attempts, including confirmation emails, screenshots, customer service communications, and billing statements.

These records can help establish when a cancellation was first requested and whether any additional charges were incurred.

As the FTC’s nationwide Click-to-Cancel rule was struck down by a federal appeals court in July 2025, state and local protections are particularly important.

Related: As locations close, Outback Steakhouse tries to fix a menu problem

That ritual broke on Monday, October 12, 2026, at Six Flags Over Georgia near Atlanta. A rider died on the Goliath roller coaster and several others were hurt, CNBC reported, citing Cobb County officials.

Police identified him as Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, The Associated Press reported. He managed technology at an Atlanta charter school where he had once taught, the AP said. Police said early interviews suggest he was thrown from his seat. How that happened is still unclear.

By Monday night, Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (FUN) had shut down nine similar coasters at six parks. On Tuesday, October 13, CNBC reported that the stock fell as much as 16% to its lowest level since December 2009.

Also read: Six Flags permanently closes iconic ride after scary allegations

The closures hit in the middle of Halloween, the last big stretch of the company’s core operating season. The paused rides include these, AP reported:

• A separate Goliath at Magic Mountain in California
• Raging Bull at Great America in Illinois
• Nitro at Great Adventure in New Jersey
• Fury 325 and Thunder Striker at Carowinds in North Carolina
• Behemoth and Leviathan at Canada’s Wonderland in Ontario

Heavy debt makes every setback hit the stock harder

Formed by the 2024 Cedar Fair merger, Six Flags calls itself North America’s largest regional park operator. Before Tuesday, the market valued its stock at about $1.2 billion, according to StockAnalysis.

Its net debt was roughly four times that, at $4.9 billion as of June, according to the company’s second-quarter release. When debt dwarfs a company’s market value, a small dent in profit can move the stock a lot.

That helps explain why shares lost nearly a sixth of their value before anyone could size the damage. The stock had already fallen more than 50% over the past year, CNBC reported.

The real fear is thinner crowds. Season pass sales rose 7% this season on a same-park basis, the release showed. CEO John Reilly has promised “a stronger, more predictable business.”

Six Flags started selling 2027 passes on Friday, August 7, 2026, including this fall’s Halloween events, according to a press release. Plenty of families have already paid. Whether they keep coming back, keep buying food and renew next year gets decided at kitchen tables.

Insurance covers the lawsuits, not the empty seats

Florida personal injury attorney Mark Lopez-Trigo sees this risk from the plaintiff’s side. His firm, Padron & Lopez-Trigo, represents a guest suing Universal over a fall at Epic Universe.

In a written interview with TheStreet, Lopez-Trigo said a ride death usually brings wrongful death and injury claims, plus manufacturer claims if something malfunctioned.

Big operators carry layered insurance, he said, but also self-insured retentions “often in the millions of dollars per occurrence.” That portion comes straight out of earnings.

“The insurance tower protects the balance sheet from a catastrophic single-verdict scenario,” he said. “It does not, however, protect from the reputational damage that follows a fatality.”

Six Flags’ 10-K filing says park incidents could “reduce attendance, increase insurance premiums and/or retention levels.” Higher retention would leave more everyday claims, like a slip in a wet queue, on its own books.

Monday’s incident came less than two weeks after Magic Mountain retired its X2 coaster amid brain injury lawsuits, AP reported. Insurers will have plenty to raise at renewal time.

Georgia’s inspection records now carry real weight

Many riders assume Washington inspects coasters. Fixed-site rides have sat outside the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s reach since 1981, Lopez-Trigo said, leaving “no federal cop on the beat.”

Georgia’s insurance commissioner, whose office oversees ride inspections, is reviewing the incident, AP reported. Where inspections are robust, Lopez-Trigo said, “a documented regulatory violation can serve as powerful evidence of negligence.”

For shareholders, Goliath’s inspection file now matters more than any earnings model.

For families, he added, “a theme park ticket is not a contract that signs away your right to sue for serious negligence.”

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• AI is moving into a market that has been overlooked for years
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX could change how Americans buy iPhones
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The stock now sits at Wall Street’s most bearish target

Before Monday, 14 analysts rated Six Flags a consensus Buy with an average target of $20.69, according to StockAnalysis. The lone bear, Mizuho’s Benjamin Chaiken, cut the stock to Sell with a $10 target in August, as the same data show.

At roughly $10, shares are now worth less than they were in 2020, when the pandemic nearly emptied the parks, CNN reported. The bear case arrived sooner than expected.

Truist’s Patrick Scholes still rated it Buy with a $22 target in September, StockAnalysis data show.

The next test comes Thursday, November 5, 2026, when Six Flags reports third-quarter results, the company has said. Investors will want reopening dates and a read on October crowds.

A roller coaster sells the feeling of danger, and it only works while riders trust that the danger is make-believe. In an industry that leaves coaster oversight to the states, that trust never appears on a balance sheet. This week showed how fast it can be marked down.

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• Onsemi delays auto restocking as AI sales jump 175%
• 5 tech stock stalwarts have tumbled over 50%
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From watching both seasons of Culinary Class Wars to keeping up with the latest season of Single’s Inferno, I’ve found myself spending considerably more time on Netflix.

Then there are shows like Better Late Than Single and the rather bizarre Kian’s Bizarre B&B, for which I had to switch between different platforms earlier.

My Netflix consumption has increased so much that I even switched to an ad-free subscription.

And now there is data to prove that consumption has definitely increased.

During the first half of 2026, Netflix viewers consumed over 97 billion hours of programming, the entertainment giant’s highest 6-month total on record.

However, a subtle shift in viewing habits suggests Netflix may need to work harder to sustain this engagement, especially as competition intensifies for eyeshare and streaming prices increase.

Netflix faces a surprising challenge as streaming costs rise

So, while global viewing hours are a record for Netflix, according to a recent Morgan Stanley research note shared with TheStreet, they increased just 2% year over year during the first half of 2026.

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Morgan Stanley analysts Sean Diffley and Daniel Duran, in their report titled “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs?” pointed to stagnant viewing hours and the absence of a major English-language breakout hit as concerns.

Not to forget, competition is intensifying.

According to Nielsen’s July 2026 report, YouTube captured a record 14.2% of U.S. television viewing.

Unlike Netflix, YouTube can draw on an enormous supply of creator-generated content without the same production costs associated with premium entertainment.

Netflix, meanwhile, has a content budget exceeding $20 billion, according to Morgan Stanley.

But keeping viewers engaged isn’t its only challenge. Streaming subscriptions have become considerably more expensive.

If you’ve felt you’re spending more on your monthly budget, one likely reason is the rising costs of streaming services.

According to Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends study, the average U.S. subscribing household spends $69 monthly on streaming video.

The study also found that 73% of consumers are frustrated by rising entertainment subscription prices, while 61% would likely cancel their favorite streaming service after a $5 monthly increase.

How much popular streaming services cost in 2026

I created a table to compare the costs of different streaming services, including the with-ads and ad-free versions:

The table was created using publicly available prices for these subscriptions and is before any taxes or discounts. 

The Amazon figure is the monthly equivalent of its $139 annual Prime membership, which is the ad version. The Prime Video ad-free version costs an additional $4.99/month or $45.99/year.

Now, consider a household paying for just three ad-free subscriptions: Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV.

Together, these cost $56.47 monthly, or $677.64 annually. Add Amazon Prime, and the total comes to $816.64 per year, or roughly $68 per month.

And if you thought those subscriptions were cheaper when you first signed up, yes, you are right, and the numbers back it up.

How streaming subscription prices have changed

Higher prices aren’t the only change consumers have faced.

In 2023, Netflix began restricting password sharing outside subscribers’ households, requiring people living elsewhere to purchase separate subscriptions or use paid extra-member arrangements.

I was not happy about it as I had a shared account with friends in different US cities.

Still, not everyone is cutting back.

Deloitte found that entertainment fans spend an average of $71 monthly on streaming services, compared with $56 among nonfans.

This does help explain why Netflix is investing heavily in programming for different audiences.

Netflix expands Korean reality shows and Indian programming

Netflix’s investment in Korean entertainment has become an important part of its strategy.

In 2023, the company announced a $2.5 billion investment in Korean content over four years, covering films, fictional series, and unscripted entertainment.

Its 2026 Korean lineup includes a third season of Culinary Class Wars, as well as returning reality shows and new dramas.

The appeal extends well beyond South Korea. 

Netflix reported that the Korean series Teach You a Lesson attracted 48 million views during the first half of 2026.

Also, K-Pop Demon Hunters remains Netflix’s most-watched and most popular film. 

India is another growing market.

Netflix is expanding into regional-language entertainment, offering comedies and reality shows such as Chumbak, The Great Indian Kapil Show, and Lock Upp.

Morgan Stanley estimated that Netflix’s viewing hours in India increased 25% to 30% year over year during the first half of 2026, supported by local programming.

Netflix is also bringing familiar Hollywood favorites to its subscribers.

Morgan Stanley highlighted a Disney licensing deal that brought all five Ice Age films to Netflix. According to the report, all five reached the platform’s U.S. top 10.

These moves, alongside live sports, games, and video podcasts, could give viewers more reasons to return between major original releases.

Morgan Stanley sees an opportunity despite Netflix concerns

Despite slowing engagement growth, Morgan Stanley remains optimistic.

The firm estimates Netflix delivers approximately 110 minutes of domestic streaming per subscriber each month for every dollar of revenue.

This compares with 96 minutes for Amazon Prime Video and 87 minutes for Disney’s streaming operations.

Advertising also offers growth opportunities.

Morgan Stanley expects Netflix’s advertising revenue to climb from approximately $1.6 billion in 2025 to $4.8 billion in 2027.

So whether or not you are subscribing to its ad-free tier, Netflix will still make up for it with ad revenue.

Netflix also plans to expand its ad-supported offering into 15 additional countries, giving more consumers a lower-priced subscription option.

Morgan Stanley may have lowered its Netflix price target to $80 from $83 while maintaining its Overweight rating.

But the firm expects double-digit revenue growth and improving profitability, given that Netflix continues to give people enough reasons to stay subscribed.

Related: Low-cost airline Ryanair exits an entire market

We tend to set the first one too high and the second one too low. Futurist Roy Amara put that idea into words decades ago, and it has held up through electricity, personal computers, and the internet.

The dot-com crash erased trillions of dollars in stock value in 2000 and 2001. The survivors then built the digital economy most of us now carry in our pockets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is living through its first price tag right now. Big Tech keeps raising its spending plans, and skeptics keep asking where the profits are.

The boom is in “the early stages of a bubble,” Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio wrote in a year-end post, according to Fortune. His firm has been quietly reshaping its portfolio amid those bubble warnings.

Now the head of an app most people associate with dance videos is making the case for the second price tag. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew thinks the market is wrong about AI in both directions.

What TikTok’s CEO expects from AI-fueled scientific breakthroughs

Speaking at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday, Oct. 12, Chew said AI’s short-term impact may be overstated while its long-term potential remains underestimated.

He put a clock on that second part. Within two to three years, “we’re going to have a real scientific breakthrough” in physics, biotech, chemistry, and materials science, he said, according to CNBC.

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• Bill Gates says some jobs should be reserved for humans
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That isn’t idle talk from Chew. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent, has been pushing its AI research beyond consumer apps.

In April, its Seed research team released Protenix-v2, a model that predicts and helps design biomolecular structures for work such as drug discovery, according to ByteDance Seed. Chew said the company is also exploring collaborations with scientists.

I studied pharmacy before I ever covered a stock. What struck me about Chew’s list is that it skips chatbots entirely and goes straight to the slowest, most expensive work in the economy, the years it takes to turn a molecule into a medicine.

Why Big Tech spending looks overhyped right now

The overhyped half of Chew’s argument shows up in the budgets. Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) plan to spend about $725 billion on capital projects in 2026, up 77% from 2025, according to a Financial Times tally reported by Tom’s Hardware.

Bulls see that as proof of demand. “The AI economy is healthy,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said, as reported by the Financial Times.

Related: Nvidia’s AI power problem is turning into its biggest edge

The corporate results are less tidy. An MIT study found 95% of generative AI pilots at companies had yet to turn a profit, Fortune reported in its coverage of Dalio’s warning.

Most of that $725 billion buys chips, servers, and data centers to run chatbots, ads, and cloud services. Those products are real, but the money is being spent years ahead of the profits needed to justify it.

The tiny research bet inside a $725 billion boom

The underrated half of Chew’s argument is getting funded, too, just on a much smaller scale. Here is how the science track has moved:

• October 2024: Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David Baker for AI protein-structure work, according to the Nobel Prize.
• April 2026: ByteDance’s Seed team released Protenix-v2 for biomolecular structure prediction and design, according to ByteDance Seed.
• Oct. 7, 2026: Google DeepMind, Meta, and Isomorphic Labs committed $300 million combined to Biohub’s Virtual Biology Initiative, part of a $1.8 billion effort with the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, according to Interesting Engineering.

The goal of that last project is a “virtual cell” that could “dramatically accelerate scientific discovery,” Biohub Head of Science Alex Rives said, according to Interesting Engineering.

Here’s what I found when I ran the numbers. The $300 million from the three tech backers equals about 0.04% of the $725 billion the four Big Tech giants plan to spend this year.

Put another way, for every $1,000 of capital spending, roughly 41 cents goes to this headline science bet. Even counting the full $1.8 billion, including data and computing resources that aren’t new cash, it’s about one-quarter of 1%.

My analysis points to an uncomfortable mismatch. Investors are paying for the expensive half of AI, while the half Chew calls underrated runs on a fraction of the money.

Chew’s warning about AI agents and your money

Chew didn’t pitch a clean utopia. He warned that people may give AI agents broad permissions without understanding the consequences, including letting those agents make purchases on their behalf, according to CNBC.

He also said more capable AI models make fraud cheaper for criminals. That is a near-term risk you can manage today.

If you try an AI shopping or booking agent, don’t hand it your main debit card with open-ended approval. Use a virtual card number or a credit card with a low limit, and turn on purchase alerts.

How patient investors can play AI’s long game

If you own an S&P 500 index fund, a big chunk of your retirement money already rides on that $725 billion bet. You don’t need to pick a winner to have exposure.

What you can control is your time horizon. Chew’s clock points to late 2028 or 2029, which is about the length of time it takes a hyped sector to either prove itself or reset.

The next read on the spending side comes when the four giants report quarterly results in the coming weeks. Watch whether they talk about science and drug discovery as revenue lines, or only as press releases.

The first price tag gets all the headlines. The second one is where your kids’ medicines, and maybe your portfolio’s best years, will come from.

Related: The AI agent race creates a new battleground for payments

You probably never think about where your music subscription goes after it leaves your checking account. Most of it flows into a shared royalty pool that streaming services split among artists and songwriters, based on each song’s share of total plays.

That setup has paid working musicians for well over a decade. Artists get paid, listeners get a near-endless library, and the platforms keep the lights on.

The system rewards volume above everything else, and it assumes every play comes from a person.

That assumption is the weak spot. A bot never gets bored, never skips a track, and never sleeps, and if you feed it enough songs, it can pull money out of a pool meant for real artists.

One man spent seven years proving exactly that. On Oct. 6, the bill arrived.

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl sentenced Michael Smith, 54, of Cornelius, North Carolina, to 18 months in federal prison for a scheme that used thousands of bot accounts to stream hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said.

Smith collected more than $8 million in royalties from Amazon (AMZN) Music, Apple (AAPL) Music, Spotify (SPOT), and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) YouTube Music, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

“Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said, as reported by WUNC.

Prosecutors called it the Justice Department’s first criminal case of its kind.

In my analysis, the bigger story is how cheaply the scheme scaled and what it shows about where your streaming dollars actually go.

How 10,000 bot accounts turned AI songs into royalty checks

Smith’s playbook ran in three steps, the Justice Department noted. He created thousands of fake streaming accounts, used software to make them play songs he owned around the clock, and collected the royalties those plays generated.

At times he ran as many as 10,000 bot accounts at once, built with fake email addresses and fraudulently obtained debit cards, the department said.

The songs came from AI. Starting around 2018, Smith worked with the CEO of an AI music company who supplied him with thousands of tracks a week, according to WUNC‘s account of the indictment.

Related: Spotify surprises subscribers with a major new free addition

Volume was the whole point. A single song with millions of plays would have tripped the platforms’ fraud alarms, so he spread the plays thin across a giant catalog.

In one email, Smith wrote that he needed “a TON of songs fast” to get around the platforms’ anti-fraud policies, the Justice Department said.

The results got absurd. In April 2023, Taylor Swift’s entire catalog drew 9.3 million family-plan streams on YouTube Music, while Smith’s bots used family plans to stream his AI tracks 80.9 million times that same month, prosecutors said.

That’s nearly nine times Swift’s total, from songs no listener ever picked.

Why every fake song play shrinks a real artist’s paycheck

Here’s the part that matters to you as a listener.

Streaming services pay royalties proportionally from a shared pool of money, so fake plays divert cash from artists whose songs real people streamed, the Justice Department explained.

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Think of it as a pizza cut by headcount. Every bot that pulls up a chair makes everyone else’s slice thinner, even though the pizza never got any bigger.

Your monthly fee and the platform’s ad revenue fill the pot, and the split depends on each track’s share of all streams in that period, as Music Business Worldwide explained in its coverage of the case.

Smith’s lawyers argued that no recording artist or songwriter suffered any appreciable loss. The music industry pushed back hard.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said the result “sends a clear message that streaming fraud is a crime,” according to Music Week.

The sentence still landed well below what the government wanted. Here’s how the numbers stacked up:

• Prison term: 18 months, plus two years of supervised release
• Forfeiture: $8,091,843.64, the loss figure both sides agreed on
• Prosecutors’ request: At least 46 months, the low end of a 46-to-57-month guidelines range
• U.S. Probation Office recommendation: 24 months
• Defense request: Probation with no prison time
• Total received: More than $14 million from royalty-paying entities, as the government’s sentencing letter noted
  • Sources: U.S. Justice Department, Music Business Worldwide

The $8 million forfeiture undercounts Smith’s haul

The headline number undersells the cash flow. The agreed loss subtracts estimated royalties from legitimate plays of Smith’s music, plus money he paid back into royalty pools by buying the accounts his bots used, Music Business Worldwide reported.

His lawyers, for their part, argued that the $8 million figure “far exceeds any amount Mr. Smith actually ‘pocketed,'” according to the same report.

I ran the numbers on the forfeiture alone. Spread across the seven years the scheme ran, $8.09 million works out to about $1.16 million a year, or roughly $3,170 a day.

The pace of the bots is even more telling. One early model Smith emailed himself used 1,040 bot accounts to produce about 661,440 streams a day, Music Business Worldwide reported.

That’s about 636 plays per bot every day, or one song roughly every two minutes and 16 seconds, around the clock. No human listens like that, which is why the scheme needed hundreds of thousands of songs to hide the pattern.

Spotify told Music Business Worldwide in 2024 that its safeguards had limited Smith’s earnings on its platform to about $60,000. Since April 2024, Spotify has paid recording royalties only on tracks with at least 1,000 streams over the previous 12 months.

Deezer data shows machine-made music scams are spreading

Smith’s case looks less like an outlier once you check the industry’s own data.

AI-generated tracks topped 50% of all new daily uploads on Deezer at their June 2026 peak, about 90,000 songs a day, the Paris-based streamer said in a July 21 release.

The same release said up to 85% of streams on fully AI-generated tracks were fraudulent in 2025. Deezer said it demonetizes those streams and will remove AI tracks tied to fraud or left unplayed for six months.

Spotify removed 75 million AI-generated “spam” tracks in a fraud crackdown in September 2025, DJ Mag reported.

AI makes songs nearly free to produce. Bots make plays nearly free to fake. Put the two together, and royalty theft turns into a volume business.

What side hustlers using song generators should know

If you’ve thought about uploading AI-made tracks for extra income, the line in this case is clear.

Smith’s lawyers pointed to a September 2025 Spotify statement that, for royalty purposes, all music is treated equally, regardless of the tools used to make it, Music Business Worldwide reported.

The crime was the fake audience. Here’s how I’d protect your money and your catalog if you’re experimenting:

• Skip any promo service that guarantees plays. Bought streams can look a lot like bot streams to a fraud filter, and that can put your whole catalog at risk.
• Run the math before you spend a dime. On Spotify, a track under 1,000 streams in a year earns no recording royalties at all, so a big catalog of barely played songs can earn you nothing.
• Keep expectations grounded. Deezer says fully AI-generated music makes up just 1% to 3% of total streams on its platform, a sign of how small its real audience is.

Streaming fraud now carries real prison time

Eighteen months is far less than prosecutors wanted. Still, it’s the first U.S. prison sentence for this kind of fraud, and it puts a price on a scheme that once looked like a gray area.

For the industry, the signal is that enforcement has caught up with the tools. For you, it’s a reminder that the money in your subscription is only as fair as the plays it pays for.

Your monthly fee is supposed to be a vote for the artists you love. This case is the first sign that stuffing that ballot box with bots now comes with a cell.

Related: How AI is changing the economics of fraud and cybercrime

Netflix (NFLX) shares have lost about 29.87% of their value over the past six months, and the stock now trades at around $71 after a small rally on Thursday. So many investors are wondering whether this fall is a warning of what’s to come or a chance to buy a strong company at a lower price. Goldman Sachs has a take on that.

The engagement problem behind the stock’s slide

Just like me, many people are starting to spend less time on Netflix than they used to. Sensor Tower data cited by Goldman Sachs shows that the total amount of time people spent on the Netflix mobile app fell by 20% year over year in the U.S. during the third quarter. It also reduced by 7% globally, Investing.com reported.

Also read: Bill Ackman does U-turn on Netflix, makes bold claim

Netflix’s monthly active users dropped by 10% year over year in the U.S. and by 1% in international markets. Nielsen’s Gauge report also noted that Netflix’s share of U.S. TV viewing fell from 8.8% to 7.8% over the last twelve months, while YouTube added about 80 basis points, according to The Motley Fool.

Why Goldman Sachs is still buying Netflix at $90

In a research note shared with me on Oct. 5, Goldman Sachs kept its Buy rating on Netflix and reduced its 12-month price target from $94 to $90. That new price target suggests that the stock will increase by about 27% from where it trades now.

Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan, who has covered internet and media stocks on Wall Street for close to two decades, told clients that the recent drop could be a chance for patient investors to buy the stock. He and his team noted that NFLX shares have dropped by about 10% since Netflix‘s earnings report on July 16, while the S&P 500 has increased by 3% within the same period.

More Streaming Stocks:

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Netflix makes money by charging its viewers monthly subscription fees. It offers three main plans for viewers to choose from, and the cheapest one includes ads. Although that ad-supported plan is the cheapest, it now plays a key role in how Wall Street views the stock.

How ad revenue could still carry Netflix forward

Sheridan’s team believes the issue of Netflix’s content can be fixed. They wrote in the note that, “We come away not thinking that NFLX has a scale of content problem but that it must improve its mix.” According to them, live sports and event programming are areas that can help to boost Netflix’s engagement and also feed the ad business.

Related: Disney’s new CEO announces his biggest bets

Netflix expects its ad tier revenue to roughly double year over year in 2026, and Sheridan’s team added that the company’s digital advertising work “keeps us very positive that NFLX’s advertising revenue (& its platform positioning) remains in a position of gaining operating and competitive momentum.”

What this means for investors eyeing Netflix stock

Netflix is shifting from a company that makes money purely from subscriptions into one that makes money from a mix of subscriptions and ads. In my view, that shift changes the company’s risk profile and gives Wall Street a new factor to consider every quarter.

The stock still has its risks. Goldman flagged that subscription cancellations due to price hikes, slower ad-tier growth, and the chance that Netflix buys a costly intellectual property could all affect the company’s near-term profit. For readers considering buying the stock, Goldman Sachs still recommends buying, but you could also wait for Netflix’s third-quarter earnings report later this month before making a final decision.

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As a Star Wars fan, I’ve seen every movie, visited Disney World’s “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” dozens of times, watched all the Disney+ television shows, and have read pretty much every book set in that universe.

If Walt Disney would give me more Star Wars, I’d watch it, buy it, and maybe pay for new platforms in order to get more of it. The same applies to Marvel, although not as deeply with the books, but certainly across films and streaming.

Disney has intellectual property (IP) its fans want, and the company plans to lean into that, according to CFO Hugh Johnston’s remarks at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

Disney plans to lean on its beloved characters

Not every Disney use of its characters and IP brings giant success. “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” for example, “only” made $345 million worldwide since its May release, according to Box Office Mojo.

That’s well below 2019’s “Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker,” which nearly hit $1.1 billion, Box Office Mojo noted.

But if you listen to Johnston talk about another recent Disney release, you understand that box office is just part of how success is measured.

“Toy Story is a great example of that. ‘Toy Story 5’ was obviously a very successful movie. But in addition to that, it drove strong performance in terms of consumer products. We had our highest growth rate in [consumer products] in 20 years,” he said.

ALSO READ: Disney cuts 300 jobs and major overhaul puts hundreds more at risk

The life of the movie also goes well beyond its theatrical release window.

“In addition to that, it was very successful on the streaming service. And obviously, refreshing that story is beneficial to us in the parks and cruises where that IP appears fairly often,” he added.

Disney is going to give fans more

Johnston said one of D’Amaro’s priorities is giving fans more of the stories and characters they love.

“We’re doing that to increase our ability to create new products and to increase monetization of all that great IP that we have as a company. So certainly leaning into that, I think, makes a ton of sense,” the CFO added.

Johnston also sees the company as leveraging its IP as it expands what Disney+ offers.

“Certainly, it’s the normal things like film and TV and video. But in addition to that, you could easily see things like consumer products. You could see parks and cruises on there. You could see interacting with our talent, interacting with our IP in a more substantial way, and even potentially gaming at some point in the future,” he added.

Disney bets big on IP

As a longtime Disney World annual passholder and someone who has taken a Disney cruise, in addition to being a Disney+ subscriber, I’m of the belief that the company can’t really overuse its IP.

What it has to figure out, however, is the line between diehards and casual fans. Too many Star Wars shows, for example, spread the casual audience out, while fewer might make each one more of an event.

Some Disney fans believe more isn’t always better, according to an independent survey from SSRS, which asked 3,364 U.S. adults about Marvel viewing habits and superhero fatigue.

The findings included:

• 78% of U.S. adults consider themselves regular viewers of MCU movies or TV shows (have seen all or most of them) or casual viewers (some, just a few).
• Among those who have seen at least one MCU movie or TV show, 34% believe Marvel has been releasing too many of them, and 29% believe the quality of the MCU movies and TV shows has gotten worse.

“These may be indicators of MCU fatigue among at least a portion of MCU viewers,” the researchers shared.

That’s a challenging line for the company to walk.

Former CEO Bob Iger addressed the “too much of a good thing argument” in comments he made during Walt Disney fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call.

“Quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality, and I think that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

Iger started the process of making sure what the company releases meets its standards.

“We lost some focus. And so, working with the talented team at the studio, we’re looking to consolidate, meaning, make less, focus more on quality. We’re all rolling up our sleeves, including myself to do just that. We have obviously great assets, great stories to tell from the assets that we either have or that we purchased,” he added.

Related: Walmart partners with Disney and M&M’s for an exclusive LTO candy

Even failures can drive Disney’s success

D’Amaro explained how the company can mine success from what seems like failure during his remarks in the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations, as with ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ and the live-action ‘Moana,’ our investments in these core properties fuel other parts of our company,” he said.

Every film, he explained, is more than just its box office.

“‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise, drew guests to the updated Millennium Falcon attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and led to significant engagement in gaming as well. And the live-action Moana is expected to be a strong title on Disney+, building on the success of the original film, which is one of the most-streamed movies of all time,” he shared.

RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino thinks D’Amaro is right.

“Disney is IP,” he told TheStreet. “That’s the whole business.”

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Hits like that are how Roblox makes money. Kids flock to a game, buy Robux to keep up, then move on to the next craze.

Roblox (RBLX) averaged 123 million daily active users in the second quarter, up 10%, and they logged 29 billion hours on the platform, according to the company’s earnings release. Bookings rose eight percent to $1.56 billion.

Management still believes in the long game. The company has “conviction in Roblox’s ability to deliver long-term growth in excess of 20%,” CEO David Baszucki said on its second-quarter call.

Investors haven’t been as patient. Roblox guided for third-quarter bookings to fall 14% to 18%, its first quarterly decline in four years, and shares fell nearly 30% on July 31, their worst one-day drop on record, Reuters reported.

According to a Bank of America research report shared with me, Roblox’s third quarter now looks better than feared, but the hit that saved it may already be fading.

Bank of America expects a Roblox third-quarter beat

Bank of America analyst Omar Dessouky raised his third-quarter bookings estimate to $1.70 billion from $1.64 billion in his Oct. 8 preview. That’s above the $1.62 billion Wall Street consensus he cited and the top of Roblox’s own guidance range of $1.58 billion to $1.65 billion.

The reason is engagement. Total platform hours fell seven percent from a year earlier in the third quarter, better than the 16% drop Dessouky had modeled, according to third-party data he tracks.

Strip out last year’s five breakout games, which have faded, and hours growth sped up to 37% from 20% in the second quarter, led by Steal an Egg.

Related: Roblox made one change and wiped out $9 billion

The catch is in the weekly numbers. “This year’s most successful launch, Steal an Egg reached peak daily hours comparable to last year’s [Grow a Garden] and Steal a Brainrot, but engagement appears to have rolled over (-9%/-18% W/W in the last two weeks),” wrote Dessouky.

Dessouky kept his Neutral rating and $48 price objective, about five percent above the $45.56 price in his report. The stock has climbed back sharply from the roughly $34.50 it hit on July 31, 247 Wall St. reported.

Search changes and age checks reshaped player engagement

Roblox brought some of this volatility on itself. Baszucki pointed on the call to “our strategic decision to focus our discovery algorithms directly on measured long-term retention,” a shift that Reuters said steered players toward games with less spending built in.

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CFO Naveen Chopra said the impact showed up “particularly with under 13 cohorts and was the primary factor impacting our bookings performance.”

Age checks added more friction. Daily active users slid from 152 million in late 2025 to 132 million in the first quarter after Roblox required facial age estimation to use chat, WebProNews reported, and fell again to 123 million in the second quarter.

At its developer conference in September, Roblox said discovery is becoming age-aware, since younger players favor short games they can drop in and out of, GamesBeat reported. Dessouky reads that as less punishing for short-lived, meme-like hits.

“A recalibrated algo serving hyper-personalized recommendations to younger users could refuel the hit factory, reviving U13 engagement and monetization,” wrote Dessouky.

Given that backdrop, it’s easy to see why investors want more proof. Fewer than half of the investors Bank of America recently spoke with expect Roblox to return to growth above 20%, Dessouky wrote.

Wall Street turned cautious fast after the July report. Benchmark and BTIG both cut the stock to Sell, while Deutsche Bank, Wedbush and BMO dropped their Buy-equivalent ratings, 247 Wall St. reported.

GTA 6 is the wildcard for holiday bookings

Dessouky expects Roblox’s fourth-quarter guidance to at least match the Street, but his own model is more cautious. He forecasts fourth-quarter bookings of $1.91 billion, below the $1.98 billion consensus and about 14% lower than a year earlier.

His worry is Grand Theft Auto 6, which Take-Two has confirmed for Nov. 19, according to heise. Dessouky assumes the launch pulls playing time away from the broader gaming world, Roblox included.

There’s evidence the hit pipeline is refilling. The number of games less than 30 days old in Roblox’s daily top 100 has held near its mid-2025 peak since June, according to Bank of America’s tracking.

Much will likely depend, however, on whether Roblox can turn one-off hits into a steady stream. In my view, that’s the core tension in the story: the algorithm is now built to reward games kids stick with, while the bookings still lean on games they binge and abandon.

Valuation is where the debate gets sharp. Dessouky values Roblox at 20 times his 2027 EBITDA estimate, roughly between high-growth software companies and traditional game publishers.

“RBLX looks inexpensive if it can sustain 20%+ growth in 2027 and beyond. Without proof of durable growth, valuation is at risk of compressing toward diversified video game publishers (10x),” wrote Dessouky.

Related: Deutsche Bank sees jarring signs in Roblox as stock crashes

A new limited-time offer at Costco could help visitors save hundreds of dollars on a two-day trip, including access to a popular add-on that would otherwise make a Disneyland visit significantly more expensive.

But there’s a catch.

Costco brings back its Disneyland Resort ticket deal

Costco (COST) has brought back its The Walt Disney Company (DIS) Disneyland Resort ticket deal, giving customers a chance to save on admission during Disneyland’s Halloween and holiday seasons.

The deal costs $329.99 and includes a 2-Day Park Hopper ticket, Lightning Lane Multi Pass for both visits, and a $60 Disney dining card, according to theme park content creator Kel Warner, known as @themeparkmomlife on Instagram.

The tickets are valid from Oct. 2 through Dec. 18, 2026, and can be used only at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. They do not apply to Walt Disney World’s parks in Orlando or Disney parks outside the U.S.

The timing of the offer is significant for families planning fall and holiday trips, when Disneyland typically sees strong demand for its park and attractions.

The latest offer also compares favorably with Costco’s previous Disneyland deal.

The most recent Costco ticket offer was available from Jan. 8 through June 12, 2026, and included a 2-Day Disneyland Park Hopper ticket with Lightning Lane Multi Pass for $389.99, according to Disney Tourist Blog.

That means the current offer costs $60 less than the earlier deal while also including the $60 Disney dining card.

At first glance, that makes the new offer particularly appealing for families trying to manage the rising cost of a Disneyland trip. However, visitors should understand the restrictions before purchasing.

The fine print reveals a catch behind the Disneyland ticket offer

The deal comes with several restrictions that could affect its usefulness for travelers with less-flexible schedules.

Once a guest uses the first day of the ticket, the second day must be used within 13 days, or the ticket will expire, according to the ticket terms.

Guests also need a theme park reservation for each visit. Reservations are subject to availability, which means purchasing the discounted ticket does not guarantee that a guest will be able to reserve their preferred park or date.

The reservation requirement could be especially important for visitors planning to travel during Disneyland’s Halloween and holiday seasons, when demand for park reservations can be higher.

The tickets are also nonrefundable at the time of purchase at Costco.

Each ticket is intended for one guest, meaning the two days cannot be divided between two different people. There is also a limit of 20 ticket purchases per Costco member.

For families purchasing several tickets, these terms are worth considering before committing to the offer.

How much money does the Costco Disneyland deal save customers?

The biggest draw of the offer is the potential savings.

Disneyland currently lists a 2-Day Park Hopper ticket for one adult at $445 on its website.

The Lightning Lane Multi Pass costs $70 for the two-day visit, bringing the combined cost of admission and Lightning Lane access to $515.

Here’s some of my previous coverage of Theme Parks:

• Disney World shares new theme park ticket prices for 2027
• Universal Orlando makes major ticketing change at its new theme park
• Disney World raises beloved event price to highest-ever level

With the $60 Disney dining card included, the components have a combined value of about $575. At $329.99, the Costco offer provides potential savings of approximately $245 per person.

For a family purchasing multiple tickets, the difference can add up quickly.

However, the savings depend on the travelers being able to use both days within the required period and secure the necessary theme park reservations.

Disneyland’s ticket terms also state that a ticket expires 13 days after its first use or Jan. 12, 2028, whichever comes first. If a ticket expires, Disney says its value may be applied toward the purchase of a new ticket at the current price, provided the new ticket costs at least as much as the original ticket.

Guests also need both a valid admission and a theme park reservation to enter a Disneyland theme park on a given day.

Disney notes that reservations are limited and depend on the availability of reservations allocated to park tickets and overall theme park capacity. A reservation is not guaranteed simply because a guest has purchased a ticket.

Disney has raised Disneyland ticket prices

The potential value of the Costco offer comes as the cost of visiting Disney parks has continued to increase.

Disneyland ticket prices vary depending on factors, including the date of a visit, and multi-day Park Hopper tickets have become more expensive compared with 2025, according to MiceChat.

The changes include:

• 2-Day Park Hopper: $435 to $445, an increase of $10
• 3-Day Park Hopper: $535 to $550, an increase of $15
• 4-Day Park Hopper: $600 to $610, an increase of $10
• 5-Day Park Hopper: $655 to $660, an increase of $5

Prices for Magic Keys, parking, Lightning Lane, and multi-day base tickets remained unchanged in the pricing update cited by MiceChat.

For travelers already planning a Disneyland trip between now and Dec. 18, the Costco offer provides a potentially significant discount compared with buying the admission, Lightning Lane access, and dining benefit separately.

Still, the savings come with the important condition that customers need to make sure their travel plans fall within the ticket’s usage window and that the necessary theme park reservations are available.

Related: Disney World shares new theme park ticket prices for 2027

He had just $60 at the time, with $43.60 already put aside for rent. Stallone says he survived on $1 or $2 a day for food and earned $34 a week, according to Fox News.

These difficult years ultimately contributed to Stallone’s creation of Rocky Balboa, the fictitious boxer whose battle became one of Hollywood’s most enduring franchises.

That makes Stallone’s narrative more than just nostalgic 50 years later. It’s also a tale of intellectual property that Amazon (AMZN) still finds valuable.

“Rocky” and “Creed” were part of MGM’s catalog, along with “RoboCop” and the James Bond movies, which Amazon acquired for $8.45 billion. At the time, Amazon claimed that MGM had more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows in its repertoire.

Additionally, Amazon continues to invest in the “Rocky” world.

Prime Video is bringing “Creed” to television, and a new Amazon MGM Studios film depicting Stallone’s struggle to create the original picture will be released this fall.

Stallone stretched almost every dollar before “Rocky”

Some of the nuances that subsequently gave the character Rocky Balboa a genuine feel came from Stallone’s early years in New York.

“I could never afford to go to a laundromat,” Stallone told Fox News. To wash everything at once, Stallone would take a shower while wearing his shirt, pants, underwear, and socks.

Similar ingenuity was needed for food. During the colder months, he used his windowsill as a makeshift refrigerator and sometimes depended on cottage cheese and three or four raw eggs.

Eventually, that specific behavior made its way into the big screen. One of the most well-known moments from the 1976 film is Rocky consuming raw eggs, but Stallone’s new book, “The Steps,” reveals that the concept was inspired by his own financial situation.

His work history was equally colorful. As a theater usher, Stallone earned $34 per week. He studied movies during his shifts, using them as an informal sort of film education. He also worked nights at a delicatessen and cleaned lion cages at the Central Park Zoo.

The situation is entirely different from Amazon’s contemporary streaming business. However, the persona Stallone created based on his life experiences turned out to be precisely the type of enduring intellectual property that media firms now value.

Amazon paid billions for MGM’s Hollywood library

Decades later, Amazon connected Stallone’s narrative to its brand.

In 2021, the digital behemoth said that it would buy MGM for $8.45 billion, and Amazon specifically mentioned “Rocky” and “Creed” as two of MGM’s main properties.

When the deal concluded in 2022, MGM joined Prime Video and Amazon Studios.

That does not imply that “Rocky” cost Amazon $8.45 billion. MGM produced thousands of movies, TV shows, and other significant franchises.

However, the movie serves as an example of how vintage Hollywood libraries may remain profitable long after the original film has left cinemas.

Decades later, successful intellectual property may lead to new projects, television series, licensing, streaming engagement, and sequels.

With the franchise, Amazon is already doing that.

Amazon is still finding new ways to monetize “Rocky”

“I Play Rocky” will be released in November via Amazon MGM Studios.

The film is based on the true tale of an unknown Stallone trying to pitch the movie and insisting on playing the main role himself.

It will run in select theaters beginning Nov. 6 and be released more widely later that month, almost precisely 50 years after the original “Rocky” launched, Amazon said.

The timing is a rare chance for Amazon. Stallone’s new biography is bringing the real-life tale behind “Rocky” back into the public debate, just as Amazon is preparing to offer moviegoers its own dramatized version of that narrative.

The company is also growing the fictitious world. Prime Video has given a series order to “Delphi,” the first live-action series based in the “Creed” world.

The series will focus on teenage boxers training at the Delphi boxing club, with Michael B. Jordan attached as an executive producer. Amazon reported that “Creed III” made $275 million worldwide and was the franchise’s top-grossing picture.

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This shows how Amazon can make money from MGM’s catalog, and not just by putting older films on Prime Video.

Familiar brands may fuel theatrical releases, streaming series, and advertising inventory, while offering fans one more incentive to stay within Amazon’s entertainment ecosystem.

This year, Amazon assured shareholders that it remains committed to Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios as part of its larger entertainment company.

Stallone’s struggle became intellectual property that still pays

Clearly, for Amazon investors, “Rocky” is a minuscule portion of a media giant that did more than $700 billion in sales last year.

One movie franchise won’t define where Amazon stock is headed. The more relevant lesson is what “Rocky” reveals about the economics driving Amazon’s MGM acquisition.

Amazon didn’t simply purchase a number of old movies. It got stories and characters that can be turned into fresh content again and again.

Amazon MGM is producing a movie about how Stallone made “Rocky,” while extending the “Creed” world for Prime Video 50 years later. That’s the type of durability that makes established intellectual property appealing to major media companies.

And the difference is stark.

Stallone reportedly washed his clothes in the shower because it cost too much to go to the laundromat. The character shaped by those years later became part of a Hollywood library Amazon valued highly enough to spend $8.45 billion acquiring.

For Stallone, “Rocky” changed a career. For Amazon, the story remains an asset it can still put back to work.

Related: Apple secret new device is a challenge to Amazon

Pandora, the music platform owned by SiriusXM, is raising prices across its paid subscription plans, meaning millions of listeners who pay for the music streaming service will soon face a slightly bigger monthly bill.

Pandora Plus is increasing from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, while Pandora Premium is rising from $10.99 to $11.99 per month. 

Pandora Premium Family is jumping from $17.99 to $19.99 a month.

The higher prices have already taken effect for new subscribers, who began paying the new rates on Sept. 22. But existing subscribers will see the higher rates beginning with billing dates on or after Oct. 22, according to Pandora.

Depending on your plan, these changes can add $12 to $24 per year for subscribers who keep their current service.

Pandora raises prices on all paid plans

The increases affect Pandora’s three main paid subscription options:

• Pandora Plus 
• Pandora Premium
• Pandora Premium Family

Pandora’s free, ad-supported service remains available.

Customers who subscribe through third-party platforms may see different prices, depending on how they are billed.

Pandora, which is owned by SiriusXM, said the higher rates will allow it to continue investing in its service.

“We’re making this update so we can continue investing in the personalized listening experience Pandora is known for, including better recommendations, improved reliability, and access to the music and podcasts you love,” the company said.

Pandora acknowledged that customers may not welcome the increase.

“We haven’t made this decision lightly, and we’re grateful for your continued support,” the company said. “It is one of the most affordable premium music services available,” ensuring that it will continue to offer tiered services, personalized stations, and a full content library.

Pandora raises prices as subscriber base shrinks

The higher prices arrive as Pandora has been losing paying subscribers and listeners, even as its parent company has managed to grow revenue from the business.

Pandora and Off-Platform ended the second quarter with about 5.6 million self-pay subscribers, down 2% from 5.7 million a year earlier, according to SiriusXM.

Its overall audience declined more sharply. Pandora had approximately 39.8 million monthly active users at the end of June, down 7% from about 42.7 million a year earlier.

Listening also declined. Ad-supported listener hours fell 9% during the second quarter to 2.35 billion from 2.58 billion a year earlier.

Yet Pandora and Off-Platform generated $543 million in revenue during the quarter, up 4% from a year earlier. Advertising revenue also increased 5% to $413 million, helped by podcasting, higher programmatic demand, and technology fees. 

Subscriber revenue was $130 million, roughly unchanged from the same quarter last year.

The figures suggest Pandora is in an interesting position. While its paying subscriber base and overall audience have declined, the business is generating more revenue.

The latest price increase could give Pandora another way to generate more from the subscribers who remain.

Music streaming subscriptions keep getting more expensive

Pandora isn’t the only music streaming service that has hiked prices this year.

Spotify raised its U.S. subscription prices again in 2026, increasing the individual Premium plan from $11.99 to $12.99 per month and the Family plan from $19.99 to $21.99 per month.

Apple Music followed with its own increases in July. Its individual plan rose from $10.99 to $11.99 per month, while its Family plan rose from $16.99 to $19.99 per month.

Amazon Music Unlimited has also become more expensive. Its individual plan now costs $12.99 per month, or $11.99 for Prime members.

The increases leave music listeners with fewer ways to avoid rising subscription bills.

Pandora Plus remains cheaper at $5.99 a month, while customers who want its full Premium service will now pay $11.99, matching Apple Music’s individual plan and Amazon Music Unlimited’s price for Prime members.

Pandora’s new $19.99 Family price also matches Apple Music’s Family plan and remains $2 below Spotify’s $21.99 Family plan.

But as music, television, and movie streaming companies continue raising prices, those relatively small increases can quickly add up across a household’s monthly entertainment bills.

And the increases leave music listeners with fewer ways to avoid rising subscription bills.

Related: Walmart, Trader Joe’s recall frozen fruit after outbreak declared over

Mattel’s main toy business has been losing momentum, so it seems the board is ready to try something different, and it’s paying up to do it.

This leadership shakeup could reshape the toys and shows Mattel makes from here, signaling a bold new direction for the company’s long-term plans.

Inside Mattel’s leadership change and the big signing deal

On Sept. 30, 2026, Mattel confirmed that Ynon Kreiz, the CEO who ran the company during the hit “Barbie” movie, is stepping down to take a senior leadership position at another public company.

Mattel’s new CEO is Roger Lynch, a media veteran who recently led Condé Nast and was already a member of Mattel’s board.

Also read: Disney World ends a free perk that helps visitors save money

“Roger is a visionary leader with a track record of growing global companies at the forefront of changing industry and consumer trends,” board member Judy Olian said in the company press release.

According to Quartz, Lynch will receive a $10.6 million cash bonus that must be paid no later than Dec. 31, 2026. He will also have a $2.3 million base salary, $6 million in restricted stock units for new hires, a standard $10 million yearly equity package, and a $985,000 relocation allowance. 

The signing bonus is simply compensation that covers the pay and stock he gave up by leaving Condé Nast. However, Mattel can still take part or all of the cash bonus back if Lynch quits or gets fired for a justifiable reason before certain dates in 2027 and 2028, with the primary clawback date being Dec. 31, 2027.

What the change means for Mattel’s business

Mattel makes most of its money by designing and selling toys from the brands it owns —for example, Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and Matchbox.

It also licenses those brands for movies and TV shows. That’s how it made a lot of money from the 2023 “Barbie” film.

More Entertainment Stocks:

• Wall Street bank backs Netflix despite U.S. drift to YouTube
• Bank of America backs Disney stock as your streaming bill climbs
• Warner Bros., Paramount stocks jump, but there’s a twist

But the toy side of the business has been under pressure lately. The New York Post reported that Barbie sales have dropped, and the company is also dealing with new import taxes that have increased the cost of making and shipping toys.

Mattel’s second-quarter revenue reached $1.13 billion in 2026, which was higher than Wall Street expected. Still, the company’s actual profits fell short of Wall Street’s expectations by about 77%. 

With Lynch in charge, Mattel might start releasing its video games, TV shows, and apps more quickly so that it can maintain steady income. “The company is well-positioned for its next phase of profitable growth and its exciting new chapter,” Lynch said in the announcement.

Takeover rumors and what Mattel investors should watch next

Authentic Brands Group recently reached out with an offer to buy Mattel for $6 billion, valuing the company at about $20 per share. Southeastern Asset Management has also advised Mattel’s board to consider selling or merging the company with Hasbro.

However, with Mattel’s board giving the new CEO this much cash upfront and strong protections, it could mean the directors want to remain independent and fix the company themselves.

That could upset shareholders, who would rather see the company get sold so they can get faster returns. For that reason, if the company’s earnings don’t meet expectations, the stock could face backlash from shareholders.

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The industry generated $78.7 billion in 2025, up 9.2% from the previous year, according to the American Gaming Association. 

Traditional casino gaming alone brought in about $50.9 billion, up 2.3%.

And this momentum has continued into 2026. 

In July, U.S. commercial gaming revenue rose 8.6% from a year earlier, while traditional casino gaming revenue increased 3.1% to $4.48 billion.

Also read: Iconic restaurant chain sees traffic drop despite discount meal deals

But one Washington casino operator is moving sharply in the opposite direction.

Maverick Washington LLC, an affiliate of RunItOneTime LLC, is moving through another round of planned casino closures as the Chapter 11 restructuring continues.

The company recently filed new Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices, noting the permanent closure of 8 casinos.

The closures will affect approximately 850 employees whose terminations are expected on Nov. 30.

Combined with earlier WARN filings so far this year, the company has now issued notices covering approximately 1,276 employees across 13 casino locations.

In its bankruptcy filings, the company pointed to competition from tribal casinos, restrictions on the games commercial card rooms can offer, rising labor costs, and a heavy debt burden.

Chief Restructuring Officer Jeff Seery said Washington card rooms cannot offer games such as slot machines, roulette, craps, or sports betting in the same way tribal casinos can, making tribal properties more attractive to some customers.

Those pressures contributed to a sharp deterioration in Maverick’s financial performance. 

EBITDA fell from $52.1 million in 2021 to $18.5 million in 2022 and $16.5 million in 2023, according to the bankruptcy declaration.

Maverick casino closures and job cuts so far in 2026

The latest round covers eight casinos and approximately 850 employees, bringing the total number of workers covered by Maverick Washington WARN notices this year to 1,276 across 13 locations.

Here is a complete list of Casino closures and resulting layoffs this year:

The total represents employees covered by WARN notices and does not necessarily mean all 1,276 jobs will ultimately disappear.

In fact, the bankruptcy process has already produced a potential change for two casinos included in the total.

A Sept. 30 bankruptcy court filing shows the debtors reached an agreement to sell the operations and related personal property of Great American Casino in Tukwila and Riverside Casino to TIL Gaming Bidco LLC.

TIL Gaming Bidco separately reached an agreement with Blue Owl to acquire the real property interests in the two locations.

Under the proposed transaction, the debtors would receive $75,000 along with TIL Gaming Bidco’s assumption of certain liabilities.

The filing says the purchaser would take over operations at the two cardrooms, potentially allowing the properties to continue operating if the sale is completed.

This possibility also applies to the latest eight closure notices.

Maverick Washington said in the WARN filings that because the company remains subject to bankruptcy proceedings, a potential change in owner or operator could mean an announced closure does not occur or is delayed.

In that case, the new owner might retain the employees, and the proposed layoff count is open to change.

Maverick’s bankruptcy followed steep financial deterioration

RunItOneTime LLC and affiliated debtors filed voluntary Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in July 2025.

In a declaration supporting the Chapter 11 petitions, Seery said in addition to competition from tribal casinos, Washington’s commercial card rooms face restrictions on games, including slot machines, roulette, craps, and sports betting.

These rules do not apply in the same way to tribal casinos, according to the filing.

Seery said those regulatory differences made tribal casinos a more attractive option for many customers.

Rising labor expenses added another challenge.

Between 2022 and 2025, Tukwila’s minimum wage increased 46%, while the rest of Washington saw an increase of 15% over the same period, according to the declaration.

The company also carried approximately $306 million in debt, excluding capital lease obligations.

The restructuring has since focused heavily on selling or transferring assets.

A newer bankruptcy filing says temporary rent concessions from Blue Owl allowed certain properties to remain open during the Chapter 11 proceedings.

But those concessions expire on Dec. 1, 2026.

The debtors said they would no longer be in a position to continue operating properties that had not been transferred or otherwise dealt with under the restructuring arrangement once those concessions end.

Related: 60-year-old iconic furniture chain closes all stores, liquidates

The former employee said she was wrongfully associated with the post and subjected to harassment, discrimination, and retaliation as the backlash spread online.

Now, the proposed settlement is also drawing attention to how municipalities handle workplace complaints, employee protections, and the costs associated with legal claims against local governments.

Kansas City is paying $900,000 over a Harrison Butker post

The City of Kansas City, Missouri, is moving to authorize a $900,000 settlement with former city social media manager April Leonard over a lawsuit alleging discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment.

The proposed settlement would be paid from the city’s previously appropriated Public Official Liability Fund.

Leonard filed an employment lawsuit against the city and later amended her claims to include disability discrimination, racial discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment related to a social media post about Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. She also alleged that the city failed to adequately protect her or make clear that she was not responsible for the post.

If approved, the settlement would resolve Leonard’s claims, but a settlement itself does not establish that the allegations were proven in court.

Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said the settlement raises broader questions about how the city handles employee complaints and workplace discrimination.

“When you look at the expenditures that have been made for discrimination, it’s alarming, it’s troubling,” Robinson said, FOX4KC reported.

What Harrison Butker’s statement said and what Kansas City posted

The dispute traces back to May 2024, when Harrison Butker delivered a commencement address at Benedictine College, a private Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas.

During the 20-minute speech, Butker discussed his views on women’s roles, marriage and family, while also criticizing LGBTQ+ Pride Month and abortion rights. His remarks generated significant public controversy.

Days later, the official X account for the City of Kansas City posted a message referring to where Butker lived.

“Just a reminder that Harrison Butker lives in the City of Lee’s Summit.”

The post was subsequently deleted, and the city apologized, saying it had been shared in error. The employee responsible for the post was later fired from city employment, KCTV5 reported.

Leonard has maintained that she did not write or publish the post.

According to her lawsuit, Leonard alleged that her position as a city social media manager caused people online to associate her with the message even though she said she was not responsible for it. She alleged that the resulting harassment became serious enough that she needed to stay in a hotel for security.

The Kansas City Star reported that Leonard’s lawsuit said she and another city employee faced threats and that the city did not make the public clarification they had requested, stating that they were not responsible for the post.

Those claims are allegations contained in litigation and have not been established as findings against the city.

Why the $900,000 settlement matters to Kansas City taxpayers

The proposed settlement is funded through the city’s Public Official Liability Fund, according to the ordinance.

That means the case has a direct public-finance component, although the city’s official record does not establish that the entire $900,000 would be paid directly to Leonard personally. Settlement agreements can include amounts covering attorney fees, costs, or other obligations, depending on their terms.

The Leonard case is also not the only employment-related lawsuit involving the city in recent years.

In May 2026, the Kansas City City Council approved a $500,000 settlement with former Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Director Andrea Dorch. Dorch had alleged racial discrimination and whistleblower retaliation in a lawsuit against the city and former City Manager Brian Platt.

In August 2025, the city approved a $900,000 settlement with former Assistant City Manager Kerrie Tyndall in a lawsuit alleging whistleblower retaliation and employment discrimination.

These cases involved different allegations and circumstances, and their settlements should not be treated as evidence that the claims in Leonard’s case were proven.

Still, the series of legal disputes has prompted discussion among Kansas City officials about the city’s workplace practices.

Robinson said the city should examine its practices, protocols, and procedures for handling employee complaints.

The city manager, while declining to discuss the specifics of Leonard’s case, said the city was reviewing its training and practices, according to FOX4KC.

Here’s some of my previous coverage on Sports Business:

• Why the 2026 FIFA World Cup is a billion-dollar retail boom
• NFL makes major media deal that female fans will love
• Why F1’s sponsorship boom is nearing $3 billion

The Leonard case puts renewed attention on how Kansas City handles employee complaints involving public controversies and how settlements involving city employees are funded.

Related: NFL change will make Wall Street very happy

The Walt Disney Company has begun another round of layoffs, eliminating roughly 300 jobs, primarily in human resources and technology, as new CEO Josh D’Amaro continues to restructure the company. 

The cuts are expected to take place over several days, Deadline reported.

And the workforce reductions may not stop there.

Separately, Disney is planning a significant restructuring of its television operations that could result in hundreds of additional layoffs and the consolidation of divisions.

Also read: Microsoft cuts hundreds more jobs as restructuring deepens.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the TV overhaul, citing people familiar with the matter.

Senior executives are still working out the details of that plan, which may not be finalized until the end of the year.

The two developments are separate, but together they put hundreds more Disney jobs at risk or as already in the process of being eliminated.

Disney television business faces another overhaul

Disney Entertainment Television Chairman Debra O’Connell is leading the planned restructuring, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The changes are intended to organize Disney’s television operations more around its streaming customers than around individual brands developed during the traditional linear-TV era.

More Layoffs:

• Oracle layoffs top 2,500 workers as AI spending surges
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Executives overseeing ABC Entertainment, 20th Television, Hulu Originals, and Freeform are among those expected to be affected by the changes, according to the report

The restructuring comes as Disney increasingly puts streaming at the center of its entertainment strategy.

At the company’s latest earnings call in August, D’Amaro said that during his first five months as CEO, he had been focused on making Disney “execute as one company around a unified strategy.”

He described the company’s “One Disney” operating model as a way to connect its businesses more closely and capture more value across its portfolio.

Disney is also moving Disney+ toward what D’Amaro called the “digital centerpiece” of its relationship with customers and has been working to integrate Hulu more deeply into the platform.

But that strategy is unfolding as the economics of traditional television come under increasing pressure.

Cord-cutting continues to reduce the cable and broadcast businesses that historically generated substantial profits for media companies.

And if the data is any indication, I’m hardly alone in changing how I watch television.

About 83% of U.S. adults now watch streaming services, compared with just 36% who subscribe to cable or satellite television at home, according to Pew Research Center. 

Moreso, 55% stream without also subscribing to cable or satellite. 

Disney is hardly the only traditional television company confronting that shift.

Broadcasters and station owners have also pursued consolidation and restructuring as the industry adjusts to changing viewing habits, a trend I have previously covered through developments involving Tegna and E.W. Scripps.

Disney signals more cost reductions are coming

Disney management had already indicated that reducing expenses, including labor costs, remained part of its strategy.

During the August earnings call, CFO Hugh Johnston said the company was focused on improving productivity and efficiency to redirect resources toward growth.

More significantly for employees, Johnston said that work was ongoing as Disney looked at “meaningful reductions to cost, including labor and SG&A.”

D’Amaro similarly said Disney wants to operate in a more integrated way, with greater speed, discipline, and efficiency.

He argues that working more cost-effectively would free up capital for investment in content, technology, and new guest experiences.

On a recent visit to Disneyland in California, though, I was reminded that maintaining the existing guest experience matters too.

I found myself stuck aboard Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and later waiting through technical issues affecting The Little Mermaid attraction.

For visitors paying Disney’s increasingly premium prices, investment in its parks is not only about what comes next, but also about keeping what is already there running smoothly.

Disney layoffs have spread across the company

The roughly 300 latest cuts continue a series of workforce reductions since D’Amaro became CEO in March.

Disney has eliminated more than 1,500 jobs across three rounds of layoffs, including about 1,000 jobs in April, several hundred more in July, and roughly 300 in the latest round.

Hundreds more jobs could be at risk as Disney separately works on a restructuring of its television business.

In April, Disney eliminated roughly positions across areas including marketing, studios, television, ESPN, products, technology, and corporate functions.

Disney followed those cuts with another round in July that affected several hundred employees across Pixar, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television, National Geographic, and other parts of the company.

These reductions also come as Disney works to bring Hulu and Disney+ closer together and reorganize around a more unified digital entertainment business.

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Netflix’s own numbers show how far that habit has spread. Non-English titles now make up more than a third of all viewing on the service, according to Netflix’s first-half 2026 viewing report.

India also logged its highest half-year viewership, led by the heist film Dhurandhar.

That quiet shift now anchors a fresh bull case. Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft upgraded Netflix (NFLX) to Buy from Hold on Sept. 29, arguing investors are too fixated on how much Americans watch.

The odd part is that Kraft cut his price target to $95 from $100 while turning bullish. He also trimmed his operating income and free cash flow estimates, which makes this a valuation call rather than a sudden change in the business.

Also Read: HSBC sends blunt message to Netflix stock investors

Deutsche Bank says investors are watching the wrong screen

Kraft’s case rests on the premise that viewing is still growing. Time spent on Netflix abroad has risen year on year in each of the past four six-month periods, he wrote, according to Investing.com.

The U.S. picture keeps bears busy. YouTube captured a record 14.2% of U.S. TV viewing in July, according to Nielsen. That shift drove HSBC to downgrade the stock to Hold on Sept. 22.

Kraft’s counter is production scale. More than 60% of Netflix’s content is now made outside the U.S., he noted, an edge he believes will protect its global lead.

Valuation does the rest. Netflix trades at about 18 times Deutsche Bank’s 2027 earnings estimate, versus roughly 40 times forward earnings at its June 2025 peak, Kraft wrote. He said he “never thought of ~40x as a reasonable multiple” for the stock.

That explains the target cut. Lower profit estimates pulled it down, yet a recovering multiple and forecast 23% EPS growth in 2027 still leave about 37% upside, according to the note.

Netflix’s own filings support more of that argument than the share price suggests.

Netflix’s revenue already tilts away from America

The clearest support is in a table that most headlines skip. Revenue in the U.S. and Canada grew 10% in the second quarter, while Asia-Pacific grew 18% excluding currency swings, according to Netflix’s shareholder letter.

The U.S. and Canada also bring in less than half of sales, with $5.4 billion of $12.6 billion in quarterly revenue, the letter shows. The screen-time debate centers on the slower-growing minority of the business.

AI could widen that gap. Kraft called the technology “more friend than foe” for Netflix, and the company says generative AI workflows touched roughly 300 titles this year. Two of its three highlighted examples came from India and Brazil.

Netflix said those tools deliver higher quality at lower cost, sometimes saving shots that productions would have dropped. Cheaper spectacle makes ambitious local stories easier to fund, strengthening the edge Kraft is betting on. The stock kept sliding anyway.

More Netflix:

• Bill Ackman’s surprising $934 million bet after dumping Alphabet
• HSBC sends blunt message to Netflix stock investors
• Down 46%, is Netflix a buy now?

Netflix stock sits near the bottom of its 52-week range

The slide has hit a company serving an audience approaching 1 billion people, according to its shareholder letter. At roughly $293 billion in market value, according to Stock Analysis, its swings reach the index funds that many investors own.

The shares have traded between $65.08 and $124.86 over the past 52 weeks, the same data shows. They now sit near the low, which makes Kraft’s valuation case possible.

Wall Street remains mostly positive. Fifty-one analysts rate the stock a consensus Buy with an average target of $92.82, according to Stock Analysis. Yet Hold ratings rose to 16 in September from 12 in April, so Kraft is moving against the drift.

Three developments drove the slide:

• Guidance disappointed in July. Netflix forecast 12% third-quarter revenue growth and narrowed its 2026 range, sending shares lower, according to CNBC.
• A major acquisition collapsed in February. Netflix walked away from Warner Bros. rather than raise its bid, collecting a $2.8 billion termination fee, according to Variety.
• The Street’s lowest target came on Sept. 18. Wells Fargo downgraded the stock to a $57 target, according to Stock Analysis.

Wall Street still grades global media on U.S. data

The slide also exposes a measurement gap. Nielsen updates U.S. viewing shares monthly, while Netflix will publish its detailed viewing report only once a year from 2027, according to its shareholder letter.

That creates a lopsided scoreboard. Bears get a fresh American data point 12 times a year, while the global evidence behind Kraft’s call arrives far less often.

Netflix says the change keeps the focus on revenue and operating profit. Its regional revenue table, next due Oct. 20, according to Stock Analysis, becomes the most important scoreboard.

If growth abroad keeps outrunning the home market, the lesson reaches beyond Netflix. For global media stocks, the ruler investors use can matter as much as the business it measures.

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Most of us cast those votes on autopilot. The charge hits the card, the show keeps playing, and the email about the new rate goes unread.

Run the math, though. A $2.50 bump sounds small until you multiply it by 12 months and by every service in your lineup, and three raises like that quietly add $90 a year to a household budget. That’s money that could have covered a utility bill or seeded an emergency fund.

That habit is exactly what media companies count on. Streaming has shifted from a race for subscribers to a race for profit, and the easiest lever is the one pointed at your monthly bill.

Disney (DIS) just pulled that lever again. Now one of Wall Street’s biggest banks says those higher prices are a key reason to own the stock, which matters whether you pay for Disney+ or hold Disney shares in a retirement account.

Why your streaming bill keeps climbing each year

Disney+ launched in November 2019 at $6.99 a month. The ad-free plan now costs $21.49, and existing subscribers see the new rate on their next billing cycle, CNN reported.

The price climb has lined up with a profit turnaround. Disney’s streaming business posted $712 million in Entertainment SVOD (subscription video-on-demand) operating income in the June quarter, more than double a year earlier, according to the company’s fiscal third-quarter shareholder letter.

Related: Disney’s new CEO announces his biggest bets

Subscription fees in that business rose 15%, while advertising revenue grew just three percent. That split shows where Disney’s confidence lies, since the company is betting you’ll pay more before advertisers do.

Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston described a “virtuous circle of reducing cost, reinvestment in the business” at a Goldman Sachs investor conference on Sept. 9, TIKR noted. The company has said it’s weighing cuts to labor and overhead to fund that reinvestment.

Bank of America counts on price hikes to lift Disney shares

Bank of America Securities analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich reiterated her buy rating and $125 price target on Disney in a Sept. 29 research note shared with TheStreet. That target sits about 18% above the $105.59 share price cited in the report.

Your higher bill sits at the center of that call. BofA lists “recent price increases across Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+” first among the reasons it expects Disney shares to outperform peers, ahead of streaming profitability, theme parks and ad demand.

More Streaming:

• Down 46%, is Netflix a buy now?
• YouTube TV just gave subscribers a reason to look elsewhere
• Paramount’s Warner merger has a new power play problem

That’s the investor math behind the rate hike. Price increases tend to carry fat margins, since Disney’s content costs don’t climb just because your monthly rate does.

Beyond pricing, Reif Ehrlich’s price target rests on four drivers, according to the note:

• Double-digit underlying growth in earnings per share
• A reacceleration in the theme parks
• Multiyear sports tailwinds at ESPN, including personalization, betting, and multiscreen viewing
• A new and reenergized senior management team under CEO Josh D’Amaro

She also flagged a softer movie picture, which puts more weight on streaming. Disappointing box office from the live-action “Moana” and “The Dog Stars” should weigh on Entertainment revenue near term, and a lighter fiscal 2027 slate plus higher content spending makes next year a tougher setup, BofA said.

The box office numbers back that up. “Moana” grossed about $308 million worldwide against a $250 million production budget, while “The Dog Stars” opened to just $8 million domestically, Variety reported.

Where the extra subscription money is going

So where does the extra subscription money end up? When I worked through BofA’s cash-flow table, one gap stood out.

BofA projects Disney will generate $10.1 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2026, up less than one percent from last year. Over the same stretch, the firm models $9.1 billion in share buybacks and $2.65 billion in dividends.

That’s roughly $11.8 billion flowing back to shareholders against $10.1 billion of free cash. BofA’s model has net debt rising to $39.7 billion from $36.3 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.

Disney isn’t hiding the choice. “We believe our shares are undervalued,” D’Amaro and Johnston wrote in the August shareholder letter, which lifted the fiscal 2026 buyback target to at least $9 billion.

The debt load still looks manageable in BofA’s view. The firm pegs net debt at 1.8 times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) for fiscal 2026, easing to 1.6 times by fiscal 2028.

In my analysis, the connection for everyday readers is direct. Your higher streaming bill, along with packed parks and new cruise ships, is helping bankroll a stock buyback that Disney’s own leaders call a bargain.

What the fiscal 2027 outlook means for shareholders

BofA expects adjusted earnings of $6.96 a share in fiscal 2026, up 17.4%, helped by an extra 53rd week in the fourth quarter. Growth cools to eight percent in fiscal 2027, to $7.52 a share, as Disney laps that week.

Disney itself has guided to double-digit adjusted EPS growth in fiscal 2027 when you strip out the extra week, according to its shareholder letter. BofA expects the year to be front-loaded, with New Year’s Eve timing helping the first quarter and Easter lifting the second.

Sports should get a lift from ESPN’s NFL Network acquisition, which closed Jan. 31, and from the Super Bowl broadcast. The second half gets harder as Disney laps its new cruise ships and one-time tariff refunds, the note said.

At $125, BofA values Disney at about 17 times its calendar 2027 earnings estimate. The firm calls that a slight discount to the broader market, which it views as fair for a sprawling conglomerate.

How to pay less for Disney+ and Hulu right now

If you pay for Disney+ and Hulu separately without ads, you now spend $42.98 a month. The ad-free bundle costs $21.99, which saves you about $252 a year for the same two services.

The ad-supported bundle costs $12.99 a month, MacRumors reported. That’s the plan Disney appears to be steering customers toward, and it’s the cheapest way to keep both libraries.

For investors, Disney looks like a patient-money story built on shrinking share counts, growing parks, and wider streaming margins. The risks BofA lists are real, though, including cord-cutting at ESPN, weaker consumer confidence, softer advertising, and more box office flops.

Disney is expected to report fiscal fourth-quarter results in November. BofA says the fiscal 2027 outlook will likely move the stock more than the quarter itself.

Either way, that next rate-increase email deserves a real read. Small monthly charges compound the same way investments do, and knowing which side of the trade you’re on keeps more of your money working for you.

Related: Disney+ delivers bad news to millions of subscribers

That year, eMarketer projected that 68.7 million U.S. households would not have cable, compared with 62.8 million households that would still subscribe to traditional pay TV.

A number of people have cut the cord on traditional cable or satellite TV in favor of streaming to gain lower costs, on-demand flexibility and freedom from unwanted channels. Still, price was the dominant reason.

In fact, 73% of people who canceled their cable said they did so because it was too expensive, according to statistics from Ooma. 

In 2026, however, that advantage is eroding as major streamers raise prices again. 

Disney+ and other major streamers increase prices 

In 2026, U.S. subscribers faced another aggressive wave of price increases as Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Fubo, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Paramount+ all raised rates. 

Disney+ was the latest streamer to drop the bad news to subscribers, raising both ad-free and ad-supported plans. The price for the ad-free tier reached $21.49, according to PCMag. 

Streamers that raised prices in 2026: 

• Disney+ & Hulu (September 2026): Disney raised standalone ad-free plans for both Disney+ and Hulu by $2.50 to $21.49/mo (+13.2%), while ad-supported plans rose 50 cents to $12.49/mo. The increase came exactly one year after Disney’s previous price hike according to PCMag. 
• Peacock (August 2026): NBCUniversal increased Peacock Premium (ads) by $2 to $12.99/mo (+18.2%) and Premium Plus (ad-free) by $3 to $19.99/mo (+17.7%), marking back-to-back annual price increases, according to PCMag.   
• Fubo (July 2026): Fubo increased most English-language TV plans by $15/mo (raising the core Pro plan from $73.99 to $88.99/mo, a +20.3% jump) following the restoration of NBC channels, on top of regional sports fees up to $16.99/mo, reported PCWorld. 
• Amazon Prime Video (April 2026): Amazon increased its monthly ad-free add-on fee by $2, moving it from $2.99 to $4.99/mo (about +67%), while locking 4K UHD streaming exclusively behind this paid tier, according to CNET. 
• Netflix (March 2026): Netflix implemented its second U.S. price hike in under two years, raising Standard with Ads to $8.99/mo (+12.5%), Standard ad-free to $19.99/mo (+11.1%), and Premium 4K to $26.99/mo (+8%), reported CNET.   
• Paramount+ (January 2026): Paramount raised its ad-supported Essential tier by $1 to $8.99/mo (+12.5%) and its ad-free Premium tier by $1 to $13.99/mo (+7.7%), writes CNET. 

Streaming prices outpace inflation

A recent report by James Hibberd for The Hollywood Reporter highlighted how streaming services are now raising their rates faster than cable companies ever did. Since 2022, streaming prices have gone up three times faster than regular inflation, Hibberd writes in the article. 

Subscribing to the eight major ad-free apps now costs about $151 a month. Just four years ago,a comparable lineup cost around $90. Some individual apps have seen huge price hikes:

• Apple TV has tripled in price, jumping 200% from its original $4.99 launch price.
• Disney+’s ad-free plan has risen 207% from its $6.99 launch price. 
• Netflix Premium has gone up 125% since 2013.
• Paramount+ went up 80% over five years.

For households that subscribe to multiple premium streaming services, cutting the cord no longer necessarily guarantees big savings.

Moreover, since 2019, consumer prices have risen by about 33% in total, an average increase of roughly 3.84% annually, according to Hibberd. That’s nearly twice the Federal Reserve’s 2% long-term inflation target.

Streaming prices, however, have risen considerably faster. Hibberd reports that streaming rates have collectively increased 11.8% over the past year, while annual price increases of 10% to 15% can compound quickly over time.

Subscribers react differently to the latest price hikes 

Comments in a recent discussion on Reddit’s r/television forum showed a range of reactions to the rising cost of streaming platforms compared with traditional pay-TV.

Several commenters expressed frustration with subscription fatigue, citing frequent price increases, content fragmentation and the return of ads.

“To think we once celebrated them as the desired alternative to cable only a few years ago. Not to mention the ads. It all sounds like a bad joke now,” wrote user 90_degrees. 

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Some users framed the price increases as a predictable shift by platforms once market dominance was established, leading a portion of viewers to seek alternative methods.

“We gave up on the streamers like 5 years ago and went back to pirating. Music figured it out and we gladly pay for that, but video has become too convoluted,” noted commenter hey-you-guyyyys. 

Other commenters argued that streaming remained preferable to cable, pointing to the absence of annual contracts and the ease of cancellation.

“It’ll take far, far more for them to be an undesired alternative to cable. To start, it takes a button press to cancel your Netflix subscription,”  argued midlinktwilight. 

For these defenders, the core appeal of streaming was never solely about low prices, but rather the flexibility of on-demand viewing.

Related: YouTube TV just gave subscribers a reason to look elsewhere

The crowd is usually late in both directions. Now, by that logic, Netflix deserves a serious look.

Netflix (NFLX) hit an all-time high of $134.12 on June 30, 2025. As of the week ending Sept. 25, it trades at $71.15. That’s a 46% decline from that peak. The 52-week low of $65.08 was tested in July 2026 and held, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Two major downgrades landed this September, too. Wells Fargo cut to Underweight with a $57 target on Sept. 18, and HSBC reset to Hold with a $76 target on Sept. 22. The stock’s P/E has compressed to 22x from a valuation that once stretched into triple digits 10 years ago.

That compression is the opportunity case. The question is whether the compression is finished or still in progress.

Also Read: Netflix Inc. Latest News and Stories

Here is why Netflix stock has been bleeding

The honest starting point for any Netflix analysis in 2026 is acknowledging what the data shows.

Average daily YouTube viewing globally overtook Netflix for the first time in 2025, according to Digital i’s “The YouTube Era: 2025 in Review” report. 

Daily YouTube usage rose from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 minutes in 2025. Netflix declined from 100.5 minutes to 93.4 minutes over the same period, according to the same report.

On U.S. living-room TVs, YouTube captured a record 14.2% share of viewing in July 2026, while Netflix fell to a multiyear low of 7.8%, nearly doubling the gap between the two, according to TheStreet.

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As Yahoo Finance reported, Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall noted that Netflix viewing time averaged 1.6 hours per subscriber daily in the first half of 2026, down 8% from 2023 levels. 

The concern is that Netflix’s subscribers are watching less, which limits the platform’s pricing power and advertising revenue potential.

The content pipeline has also disappointed. Netflix has not produced breakout original series at the pace that once drove subscription growth. Its push into video podcasts, games, and live events has added engagement around the edges, but has not replaced the viewing hours lost in traditional long-form content.

Netflix noted improvements on its most recent earnings call

Management pushed back on the most bearish interpretation during the Q2 2026 earnings call. Total view hours grew 2% in the first half of 2026, representing an incremental 1.5 billion hours year over year. It is a slight acceleration from the 1.5% growth seen in 2025.

Management also addressed concerns about season-over-season dropoff, stating that second-season retention actually improved slightly in 2026 compared to 2025. The company measures engagement across quality, variety, and quantity rather than relying solely on raw viewing hours.

Related: HSBC sends blunt message to Netflix stock investors

Netflix referenced a competitive strategy in the Q2 earnings call transcript, saying it is open to launching a free, ad-supported tier in certain international markets over the longer term. The streamer did cite concerns about cannibalizing paid tiers before its ad business reaches the scale necessary to support a free offering economically. 

The TF1 integration in France, four weeks in at the time of the earnings call, was showing strong local engagement.

None of this is a knockout argument for buying the stock today. But it is evidence that the business is not in free fall. It is competing in a more challenging environment than investors priced in a year ago.

Netflix’s technical picture and why the current level matters

The chart sets up a clear decision point. Netflix is sitting at a $65 to $71 support level that first acted as resistance in late 2021, rejected price, then broke to the upside and flipped to support in Aug. 2024. 

The same level also coincides with the 50-day moving average at $70.30. The key condition before any buy signal is validated is to wait for a clear rejection at the level on a higher timeframe, with bullish price confirmation. 

If the support breaks and the stock closes below $65 on meaningful volume, the next major level is lower, and the technical case for a near-term entry collapses.

Twenty-five of 33 analysts covering Netflix still rate it a buy, according to TheStreet’s aggregated ratings over the past three months. Seven rated it a hold, and one rated it a sell. Evercore ISI raised its target to $110 on Sept. 14. The analyst community broadly believes the stock has overshot to the downside.

Whether it has depends on whether the shift toward YouTube represents a permanent structural problem Netflix cannot solve, or simply a cyclical trough in its content cycle that improves as its 2026 and 2027 slate strengthens.

The 22 times earnings multiple at a 52-week low suggests the market has priced in significant doubt.

Rejection and recovery from this level is the buy. A breakdown below $65 is not. There is no reason to try to catch a falling knife.

Related: Netflix stock has a strange stock price target problem

In April, Disney World rolled out price increases for 2027, affecting single-day tickets and dining plans, according to a report from AllEars.net. It also quietly raised resort hotel rates for March 2027 earlier this month.  

The changes came after new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro said at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting that the company aims to “provide a fair amount of choice and flexibility for guests” regarding pricing. 

“When it comes to how we think about pricing, we focus on offering a wide range of options at different price points so that families can visit in ways that work for them, whether that’s during a value season or taking advantage of multi-day ticket savings or even special offers,” said D’Amaro.

Disney World ends free water park admission perk

Amid recent pricing changes, Disney World has officially ended its free water park admission perk for Disney Resort hotel guests on Sept. 9, according to a recent report from Inside the Magic.

The perk launched in 2025 and allows guests staying at participating Disney World Resort hotels to receive free admission to a Disney water park on their check-in day.

When the perk was first introduced, it was available to guests for the entire year of 2025. However, this year, the perk’s availability was cut short, restricting it from May 26 through Sept. 9.

Despite the perk ending early, Disney confirmed on its website that it will return in the summer of 2027.

Related: Disney shutting down key theme park app by fall

“Enjoy this water park perk – and other great benefits – when you stay at a Disney Resorts Collection hotel in summer 2027, excluding the Campsites at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort,” states Disney on its website. 

In the meantime, consumers have two options to gain admission to Disney World’s water parks. 

They can purchase Disney World’s 1-Day Water Park Ticket, which is currently $74 (before taxes) for visitors over the age of 10 and $68 for those between the ages of 3 and 9. 

If visitors want unlimited admission to Disney World’s water parks, they can purchase the Disney Water Park Seasonal Pass for $89 (plus tax), which will give them access to Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach.  For guests between the ages of 3 and 9, that prices goes down to $83 (plus tax).

The pass is valid for use through May 15, 2027, except on blockout dates from Feb. 19 to 21, and March 20 to 28.

Disney’s U.S. theme park demand rises as it adds more discounts

The perk’s removal comes at a time when Disney has been rolling out more discounts and promotions amid concerns about the affordability of its theme park vacations.

In 2024, a LendingTree survey found that 24% of U.S. consumers have taken on debt to pay for a Disney vacation, with unexpectedly high costs cited as a major factor. Among parents of young children, the share was significantly higher, reaching 45%.

Concerns about Disney’s affordability continued into the following year, as the Wall Street Journal reported that some Disney executives were allegedly worried that rising costs at the company’s theme parks and resorts were pricing out middle-class families.

Since then, Disney has introduced new discounts to attract price-conscious consumers. This year specifically, it has added new deals such as up to 30% off select Disney World hotel rooms for stays most nights between May 1 and Oct. 4th. 

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It also introduced a new free dining plan for kids (ages 3 to 9), which visitors can obtain when purchasing a qualifying package at a Disney World hotel that includes a dining plan for guests at least 10 years old. 

Additionally, Disney World added an afternoon ticket deal that ran from May 26th to July 29, allowing guests to get a discounted ticket for visits to the theme park after 2 p.m.

After launching additional discounts earlier this year, Disney revealed in its latest earnings report that its U.S. theme park attendance increased by 3% year over year in the second quarter of 2026. 

On an earnings call on Aug. 12, D’Amaro said that spending is increasing at Disney’s domestic theme parks, which are “performing significantly better” than its competition.  

Also, Disney Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston noted that future Disney vacation bookings are up, with demand remaining healthy.

“Demand is strong across domestic parks and cruises,” said Johnston. “Consumer products also had a terrific quarter, benefiting from the IP (intellectual property) strength we have. Looking forward, the forward bookings at Walt Disney World are up nicely, and the cruise line bookings also look very healthy as we look out to our book of business.”

In a recent analysis, Thomas Paulson, an analyst and head of market insights at Advan Research, said the U.S. theme park industry had a strong summer season, led by visits to Disney World in Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood in California.

This was due to several factors, including increased spending by higher-income consumers. 

“Fueling the strong season was exceptionally strong spending by the more affluent consumer, a strong line-up of new attractions at the parks (+Epic), and strong success at the box office,” said  Paulson.

Related: 50-year-old theme and water park to close forever after summer season

The company’s stock closed Sept. 21 at $30.80, up 10.8%, according to TechStock. That left the shares 20 cents short of the $31-per-share cash consideration Paramount would pay. Shares of Paramount Skydance, however, slumped 2.9% after initially gaining on news of the settlement.

The transaction values WBD at approximately $81 billion in equity value and $110 billion in enterprise value. Paramount expects the combination to generate more than $6 billion in annual synergies within three years of closing.

Paramount just cleared a major legal hurdle

The deal with the 12 states clears the antitrust case that had threatened to hold up the acquisition. The deal is still pending judicial clearance.

The figures on the settlement are big numbers.

The merged firm must release at least 30 theatrical pictures yearly in the first two years after closure and 32 annually in the next three years. Independent producers must make a minimum of four films a year.

If it does not, Paramount would have to pay $30 million for each picture it fails to deliver and may be forced to sell Miramax Studios.

The company also agreed to spend at least $300 million more per year on U.S. film production, or a minimum of $1.5 billion over five years, compared with its 2025 spending level, Variety noted. The settlement includes a $47.5 million worker fund and restrictions on how the combined company negotiates cable distribution.

That indicates the deal is about more than just removing a legal hurdle. It also creates considerable operational demands on the merged company’s film division.

The deal is about scale in streaming

The deal makes more strategic sense when you look at the current operational figures for the firms.

Paramount ended the second quarter with 81.6 million Paramount+ subscribers, adding roughly two million during the quarter. The company also raised its 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook to between $3.8 billion and $3.9 billion.

The streaming division of Warner Bros. Discovery reported sales of $3.08 billion in the second quarter, an increase of 10% year over year on an ex-foreign-exchange basis. Adjusted EBITDA from streaming was $512 million, up 75% over the same time last year.

That’s important because the merger is more than simply combining two movie companies. The big draw for Paramount would be the combination of Paramount+ and Pluto TV with WBD’s HBO Max and a considerably bigger library of film and television material.

WBD said roughly 40% of its global HBO Max subscribers were on the ad-supported tier at the end of the second quarter, up 11 percentage points from a year earlier.

The $6 billion synergy target is the big financial test

Paramount expects to achieve more than $6 billion in synergies within three years of completion.

The business has pointed to savings in technology integration, procurement, real estate, corporate overhead, and marketing, and the consolidation of streaming technology and cloud suppliers.

That’s rather a big aim for the size of the companies involved in the merger.

Paramount generated $6.91 billion of revenue in the second quarter, while WBD generated $8.72 billion. WBD’s quarterly revenue fell 11% year over year, while Paramount’s revenue was roughly flat.

For WBD, the streaming business is currently one of the stronger pieces of the portfolio. But the company still carried $33.1 billion of gross debt and $29.7 billion of net debt at the end of June.

Paramount had $15.16 billion of total debt at June 30, including $1.8 billion drawn on its credit facility.

The merger presents a big possibility for cost reductions but also raises a bigger focus on whether those savings can be realized as the merged business takes on a big debt burden.

The $7 million clock is still important

The resolution eliminates one of the largest near-term risks to the transaction’s timing.

Under the merger agreement, WBD shareholders are entitled to an additional $0.00277778 per share for every day after Sept. 30 until the deal closes, capped at $0.25 per 90-day period.

Paramount previously said the commitment is approximately $7 million a day based on WBD’s share count, Reuters confirmed. The U.S. Justice Department endorsed Paramount’s proposal that states post a bond to cover potential expenses of delaying the merger. A delay until an expected trial finish might have generated nearly $1.3 billion in ticking fees, Paramount said.

That specific danger has altered dramatically with the state case resolved.

What investors should watch now

The settlement moves the biggest question from whether Paramount can overcome the states’ lawsuit to whether the companies can close the transaction and deliver the financial logic behind it.

The headline numbers are simple: $110 billion enterprise value, $31 cash price per share for WBD, more than $6 billion of targeted synergies, 81.6 million Paramount+ subscribers, $33.1 billion of WBD gross debt, and a minimum of $1.5 billion of additional U.S. production spend required under the settlement.

The settlement removes a significant legal obstacle. The next test is whether Paramount can turn those numbers into the financial benefits it has promised.

Related: Paramount-WBD deal faces legal hurdle, delays

Now, two months later, the coalition is fracturing. Some want a deal. Some want structural change. Some want to block it outright. And a financial clock for Paramount starts ticking Sept. 30.

The merger in question would combine Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery into a single company owning CBS, CNN, HBO, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and dozens of cable networks.

Paramount is in advanced talks with the state attorneys general over a settlement that could resolve the antitrust lawsuit, CNN reported. But the coalition is divided, and the divisions are significant.

Why the Paramount-WBD merger is still in legal limbo

The U.S. Department of Justice reviewed the proposed merger and allowed it to proceed without conditions in June. That should have been the last major regulatory hurdle. Instead, 12 state attorneys general filed their own antitrust case, arguing the federal review was inadequate.

State AGs can pursue independent antitrust actions even after federal regulators clear a deal. The state coalition’s lawsuit is now the primary obstacle between Paramount and closing the acquisition.

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A judge has ordered both sides to appear for a mandatory settlement conference on Oct. 14 and 15, according to Deadline. If that conference fails to produce a deal, the case is heading to trial in California in early March.

A trial would be costly, slow and uncertain. Paramount has agreed to pay a $7 billion regulatory termination fee to Warner Bros. Discovery if the merger collapses for antitrust reasons.

That number gives both companies a powerful incentive to settle.

What each state is asking for

California Attorney General Rob Bonta leads the 12-state coalition and has been pushing in recent days to reach a settlement. But the coalition is not speaking with one voice.

What the merged company would own:

• Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. film studios
• CBS and CNN news operations
• HBO, Paramount+, Pluto TV and major streaming platforms
• Showtime, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon and dozens of cable networks
• CBS Sports and major live sports rights
• Large production, distribution, and licensing operations

New York Attorney General Letitia James is not currently on board. She has been seeking additional protections for workers, including employees at Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery operations in New York. Her office has been in contact with at least six affected labor unions during the negotiations, CNN reported.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is “fighting to preserve the independence of CNN and CBS News,” according to CNN. A merger that unites two major film studios, two national news organizations, dozens of cable networks, and major streaming platforms raises editorial independence concerns that go beyond typical antitrust analysis.

Connecticut and at least two other states are not satisfied with the terms currently on the table. They are seeking additional remedies before signing on.

Bonta himself has publicly insisted on structural remedies, meaning actual asset sales, such as the divestiture of cable channels, rather than behavioral commitments. Reported settlement terms include independent monitoring of CNN content and commitments around theatrical releases, CNN also reported.

Those terms are behavioral, not structural. That gap is at the center of the stalemate.

The outside pressure trying to kill the Paramount-WBD deal

Hollywood unions and advocacy groups have not waited for the attorneys general to decide. The Block the Merger Coalition organized protests outside Bonta’s Los Angeles office on Sept. 21, James’s New York office on Sept. 22, and the Writers Guild of America West headquarters on Sept. 23.

The coalition called any deal built on unenforceable concessions “an insult to everyone who has stood up against this harmful transaction,” CNN reported.

The coalition has also raised questions about the Ellison family’s political ties. Paramount CEO David Ellison has cultivated close relationships with the Trump administration. His father, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s executive chairman, is a longtime Trump ally.

Opponents argue those relationships may have influenced the DOJ’s decision to clear the deal without conditions.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, facing a difficult reelection campaign, said she would “fight like hell” to keep film and television production in California after Paramount reportedly threatened to leave the state if the deal was blocked, CNN reported.

The threat turned the merger into a local political issue as well as a national antitrust one.

What happens next and what it means for the deal

The Oct. 14-15 court-ordered conference is the next major inflection point. The judge mandated the session as a required step before the trial can begin. Appearing at the conference does not mean either side has agreed to anything.

If the conference produces a settlement that enough states accept, Paramount moves closer to closing. If it falls apart, the trial begins in March and the outcome becomes even harder to predict.

Bonta previously canceled a scheduled meeting after accusing Paramount of leaking details from a prior discussion, which adds mistrust to an already complicated negotiation.

For investors, the situation is in motion but not resolved. Paramount is carrying a $7 billion liability if the merger collapses on antitrust grounds, and the clock starts running Sept. 30.

Neither number disappears until a court approves a settlement or one side wins at trial.

Related: Paramount’s Warner merger deal faces serious new problem

Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim said in August that a sale of the network was on the table as the company tried to clear the state antitrust suit blocking its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

The terms under discussion are now much cheaper. Reuters reported Friday that independent content monitoring of CNN and a commitment on the number of theatrical releases are among the items being negotiated, citing people familiar with the matter. Nobody is selling anything.

Related: Paramount threatens key market exit over $110 billion mega deal

The price of peace just got cheaper

That shift is the actual story, and most coverage buried it under the stock pop.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has said repeatedly that structural remedies, meaning divestitures, protect competition better than promises to behave. Monitoring and release quotas are promises to behave.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the sides also discussed operating the studios separately for a period rather than merging them immediately. That is a delay, not a divestiture. On these terms, Paramount keeps the company whole.

A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment. The California Department of Justice said the talks are confidential, Reuters reported.

How a September close became a March trial date

The calendar explains why Paramount’s posture softened the state’s position, rather than the other way around.

Paramount agreed on Feb. 27 to buy WBD for $31.00 a share in cash, valuing it at $81 billion in equity and $110 billion including debt, according to Paramount. The Justice Department cleared it in June. Twelve states sued in July, and a court stipulation pushed the outside closing date to June 2027.

Then the meter started. The merger agreement adds “ticking consideration” for every day past Sept. 30:

• Paramount owes Warner Bros. shareholders $7 million a day until the deal closes, according to CNBC. That is roughly $650 million a quarter.
• The fee accrues at $0.00277778 per share daily, capped at $0.25 per 90-day period, per WBD’s proxy filing.
• A March 2027 trial of the states’ lawsuit would mean possibly $1.3 billion in fees before a verdict, in addition to financing and legal costs.
• Paramount has asked the states to post a $1.88 billion bond, with a hearing set for Sept. 24, Variety reported.

What the stocks said after the bell

Paramount Skydance closed Friday at $10.21, down about 3.9% on the session, then rose 7.6% after hours on the settlement reports, according to Seeking Alpha. Warner Bros. Discovery gained 8.3%.

WBD is no longer a media stock in any useful sense. It is a merger-arbitrage position: the share price tracks the odds of a $31 cash payout, not HBO Max subscriber growth. It closed Friday roughly 10% below that price, and Friday night’s move erased most of the gap.

The more revealing move was Paramount’s. Acquirers usually fall when a contested deal firms up, because certainty means paying.

Paramount rose because the delay now costs more than the concession does.

Analysts still refuse to price a clean close

While after-hours traders rushed to price in a resolution, Wall Street has not caught up to the market. Nineteen analysts polled by S&P Global rate WBD a consensus Hold with an average 12-month target of $29.82, according to StockAnalysis.

That number is the tell. In an all-cash deal, a target below the contracted $31 is not a valuation call. It is a discount for the chance that the deal dies.

The spread between desks shows how wide the disagreement runs. UBS carries a $31 target while Bank of America sits at $24, according to Yahoo Finance. Barclays reinstated coverage at Equal Weight on Sept. 16, and Bernstein reaffirmed its Hold a day earlier.

For investors, the practical read is blunt. Upside is capped near $31 plus accrued fees, while the downside if talks collapse is the unaffected price the deal replaced.

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State attorneys general are the new last hurdle

Paramount cleared the DOJ, the FCC and regulators in more than 65 countries. One state coalition still froze a $110 billion transaction for two months and extracted concessions from it.

A settlement could come as soon as this weekend, according to CNBC. That would end the state case, but not every obstacle.

The Writers Guild of America is suing separately over pay and working conditions, and a union spokesperson did not say whether it is part of the current talks, according to CNBC.

The precedent is what lasts. Federal clearance used to be the finish line for a megadeal. The next contested merger in media or tech will now budget for a second fight in state court, and for the ticking fee that makes losing it expensive.

Related: Paramount just offered up its crown jewel

Hollywood has been making movies about high-stakes showdowns for more than a century. Right now, it’s actually living one.

Paramount Skydance (PSKY) CEO David Ellison has threatened to relocate his studio out of California unless he reaches a settlement with the state’s Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta by Oct. 1. 

California has been the home of the creative capital. Tennessee, Texas, and Georgia are all reportedly on the list of potential destinations, according to a Seeking Alpha report.

Internal talks at the Los Angeles mayor’s office and the California AG’s office indicated the announcement was expected Sept. 15. It did not happen. 

Instead, a late Sept. 15 court filing revealed both sides agreed to meet Oct. 14 to explore a potential settlement.

Stock performance tells us exactly how the market feels about this uncertainty. PSKY is down 19.09% year to date and 39.27% over the past year, Yahoo Finance reported.

Also Read: Paramount Skydance Latest News and Stories

The deal that started this battle

The story begins in September 2025, when Paramount Skydance began submitting unsolicited acquisition offers for Warner Bros. Discovery. 

WBD’s board initially rejected each one. Then, in Oct. 2025, the board reversed course and put the company up for auction to maximize shareholder value, NBC News reported. It was a signal that Ellison’s persistence had won out.

The resulting $110 billion combination would actually be the largest merger in Hollywood history. It would unite two of the five major film studios and two of the five major basic cable channel owners. 

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On paper, it is a transformational consolidation in an industry under severe pressure from streaming fragmentation and declining theatrical attendance.

In July 2026, according to the Office of the Attorney General’s press release, Bonta led a coalition of 12 state attorneys general in filing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Their case rests on a specific competitive concern that the combined company would control approximately one-third of theatrical motion pictures and one-third of basic cable programming in the United States. 

For more than a century, they argued, Warner Bros. and Paramount have been independent sources of creativity and competition. This merger would, of course, extinguish that competition.

The standoff: structural concessions vs. behavioral promises

The core of the dispute is what the AG will accept as a condition for approval.

Bonta wants structural concessions: divestitures of actual business units. Sell something significant. Create a structural remedy that preserves the competition the merger eliminates.

Ellison has offered behavioral concessions, or rather, promises, about what the merged company will do, including a commitment to release at least 30 films. The AG’s office has not been subtle about its skepticism. 

Related: Paramount just offered up its crown jewel

“What Paramount decides to do is Paramount’s choice alone,” the AG’s office said in a statement, according to Seeking Alpha.

“We’ll continue to apply the law without fear or favor and continue to be open to coming to the table for good faith discussions.”

The Oct. 14 meeting will give both sides a structured opportunity to determine whether there is any middle ground between divestitures and promises.

What Paramount’s business actually looks like right now

Ellison is operating under very tight negotiating pressure because Paramount’s underlying performance gives him limited leverage to play a long game.

From the Q2 2026 earnings call, Studio segment revenue grew 16% year over year (YoY), and Paramount scaled its theatrical release slate to 15 films in 2026, nearly double the prior year’s eight. Television studios are on track for 90 series and 800 episodes this year. 

On net subscribers, it added 2 million in Q2, reaching 81.6 million global subscribers. Also, it posted its best-ever retention quarter with double-digit growth in view hours and advertising revenue. Paramount+ revenue grew 16% YoY.

I don’t see those as particularly bad numbers. But a stock down nearly 40% over the past year tells you the market has already priced in significant uncertainty — not just over whether the Warner Bros. deal closes, but regarding the terms and what the combined company could look like if the AG extracts meaningful concessions.

The Oct. 1 deadline Ellison set and the Oct. 14 meeting that replaced it will determine whether this becomes Hollywood’s most expensive settlement or Hollywood’s most dramatic relocation announcement.

Related: Paramount’s Warner merger deal faces serious new problem

Evercore ISI looked at the same stock and saw an opportunity. Analyst Kutgun Maral raised his Netflix price target on Sept. 14 and kept his Outperform rating. He told investors the sell-off is a good opportunity to buy the stock. 

NFLX shares rose after the call, and people started asking again if the streaming giant is actually cheaper than it looks, or if the market is pricing in problems Netflix’s management has not admitted to yet.

Evercore’s Kutgun Maral finds new reasons to back Netflix stock

Evercore ISI raised its price target on Netflix to $110 from $100 on Sept. 14, and kept its Outperform rating, according to Investing.com. NFLX shares are near $78, so that target implies roughly 41% gains. 

Maral has covered media, cable and telecom stocks for over a decade. He started from Sterne Agee before moving to RBC Capital Markets, and now Evercore ISI, which makes his opinion valued on Wall Street. His call this time is based on fresh survey data.

Evercore’s 58th quarterly U.S. subscriber survey found Netflix’s household penetration climbed to 63%, which is a multi-year high, GuruFocus reported. Japan penetration hit a record 22%, and subscribers in both markets showed stronger intent to stay, even though U.S. customer satisfaction is still behind.

Live sports drove much of that improvement. The number of Netflix users who watched live sports increased to 60% in September from 42% in March, and 45% of new Japanese subscribers signed up because of Netflix’s World Baseball Classic promotion. Bill Ackman also changed his mind on the stock this summer.

How Netflix actually makes money, and why the business keeps improving

Netflix earns nearly all its revenue from monthly subscriptions. Those subscriptions are split between an ad-free tier and a cheaper ad-supported plan launched in 2022. That ad-supported plan is now one of the fastest-growing parts of the business.

The company’s second-quarter revenue reached $12.56 billion, up 13.37% year over year, and Netflix’s management targets a 31.5% operating margin this year, up from roughly 27% two years earlier. 

“I believe that we are delivering one of the best entertainment values that has ever existed,” Co-CEO Greg Peters told investors on the second-quarter call. “Our ads plan at $8.99 in the United States, we think is an amazing entry point.”

Related: Disney may give streaming away for a surprisingly profitable reason

Advertising is expected to bring in about $3 billion this year, which is roughly double 2025’s total. Ad revenue carries higher margins than subscriptions, and is an effective growth driver for Netflix.

Buybacks add further support. Netflix’s board approved an additional $25 billion in share buyback authorization in April 2026, according to the company’s SEC filing.

CFO Spence Neumann told investors the company spent $4.7 billion of that in the second quarter alone. He called it “our largest quarter of share repurchase in our history,” and $27.1 billion still remained as of June 30, according to the earnings call transcript obtained by Yahoo Finance.

Where this bullish call could go wrong

Netflix’s third-quarter revenue guidance of $12.86 billion is below Wall Street’s estimate of roughly $13 billion, which some investors are cautious about.

U.S. customer satisfaction is another worry. Even though penetration and retention improved, Evercore’s survey flagged ongoing satisfaction concerns among American subscribers.

There is also competition. Disney (DIS) trades near $106 even as it pays for the expensive launch of its standalone ESPN streaming platform. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is close to $28 and is managing heavy debt while trying to sell the company. Both are still bidding for the same sports rights as Netflix.

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Netflix, Amazon and YouTube also just formed the Streaming Access and Choice Alliance, a lobbying group that will push for looser rules on how streamers bid for live sports, Axios reported. The alliance shows how much the three companies value live sports, and it signals that regulators are watching the space more closely.

Jim Cramer had a more cautious take. He acknowledged that Netflix’s most recent quarter had disappointed, but he still told viewers on Mad Money, “This is not a broken company.”

What investors should watch before acting on this call

Netflix reports third-quarter results on Oct. 20, and that will be the first real test for Evercore’s call. Investors should watch whether ad revenue and margins keep growing at the rate the company’s management has promised.

Netflix is just climbing back from a steep drop, so anyone considering a position should think about the risks as well. Netflix’s odds of rising depend heavily on live sports events and advertising, and if either one slows down, shares could fall back to their recent lows.

To be on the safer side, investors can spread their purchases through dollar-cost averaging instead of buying all at once. You can also diversify your portfolio to cushion against a disappointing quarter or a broader pullback across tech and media stocks.

Related: NFL junkies forced to pay big bucks to watch 2026 games

It is working to enhance the value of its games and strengthen its food business as consumers become more selective in their discretionary spending.

The restaurant and entertainment chain, which combines arcade games, food, and sports viewing under one roof, has also been reshaping its leadership team.

All this as it pulls back on new-store spending while working through a broader turnaround.

That effort faced another setback after Dave & Buster’s reported weaker second-quarter 2027 results on Sept. 15.

The company posted revenue of $544.1 million, down from $557.4 million a year earlier, while comparable-store sales declined 2.9%.

Dave & Buster’s also reported $12.5 million in net loss, or 36 cents per diluted share, compared with net income of $11.4 million, or 32 cents per share, a year earlier. 

Adjusted EBITDA fell to $98.9 million from $129.7 million.

The results added to pressure on a stock that has already fallen sharply this year.

The company’s shares dropped following the report, touching a new 52-week low of $6.45 on Sept. 16 before slightly recovering later in the day.

Dave & Buster’s stock is down over 56% year-to-date and nearly 65% over the past 12 months.

The stock has also lost more than 30% over the past month and nearly 39% over the past three months.

These declines reflect a central problem facing the company, its higher-margin entertainment business, which has historically defined Dave & Buster’s, remains under pressure.

Even as its food and beverage sales are improving, 

Dave & Buster’s arcade business under pressure

The company’s sales mix has become one of the biggest challenges facing its turnaround.

Food and beverage comparable sales increased 7.6% during the second quarter and have now been positive for five consecutive quarters.

But the entertainment side of the business continues to struggle, even as Dave & Buster’s rolls out new games and changes how much customers pay to play.

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During the earnings call, analysts noted that entertainment sales had declined year over year for roughly 8 quarters.

It raises the question of whether the game-focused model itself had become less attractive to consumers.

CEO Darin Harper said the company’s consumer research continues to show demand for out-of-home gaming, but acknowledged that Dave & Buster’s has not kept its arcade floors innovative and relevant enough.

“You see other concepts out there with similar type offerings that are able to grow. Where we have not delivered great is that ongoing innovation and ongoing relevancy in our game room floor,” said Harper.

Further noting, “We have to innovate more, and we have to be more relevant for the guest.”

Management said the company has underinvested in its midway over the past several years and needs to catch up through new games, intellectual-property partnerships, and other entertainment experiences.

Dave & Buster’s has launched 10 new games and attractions this year, including experiences tied to The Mandalorian and Grogu, John Wick, Stranger Things, and Hot Wheels.

Management said more than 70% of guests surveyed indicated that learning about new games or activities would encourage them to visit more often.

The company has also changed game pricing in an effort to give customers more value.

Harper said the changes allow customers to play longer while spending roughly the same amount on entertainment, resulting in gameplay and dwell-time increases of about 16% to more than 20%.

The hope is that customers who stay longer will also spend more on food and drinks.

Dave & Buster’s said its Eat & Play Combo has already helped convert some customers who previously came only to play games into food-and-beverage customers.

Dave & Buster’s sees early signs of improvement

There are some indications that the company’s sales trends may be stabilizing.

Comparable-store sales fell 5% in June before improving to a 1.6% decline in July.

Management said trends improved further during the first five weeks of the third quarter and expects better top-line performance over the remainder of the year.

Dave & Buster’s has also found some success tying its stores to major sporting and cultural events.

Management said World Cup activations generated double-digit sales growth during some matches as the company used themed food, games, and watch experiences to draw customers into its locations.

The company plans to lean further into those occasions as it tries to position Dave & Buster’s as a destination for sports viewing, celebrations, and other group outings.

Still, the broader consumer environment remains difficult.

Harper said lower-income consumers have been affected more heavily by current economic pressures.

But he also acknowledged that Dave & Buster’s cannot blame all of its challenges on the economy because other brands operating in the same environment have performed better.

The company is emphasizing value through offers, including its Eat & Play Combo and half-price games on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Wall Street cuts Dave & Buster’s price targets

Wall Street analysts have also become more cautious following the quarter.

UBS analyst Dennis Geiger lowered the firm’s price target to $9 from $12 and maintained a Neutral rating.

Geiger said sales trends are showing early improvement, but greater-than-expected margin and earnings pressure, elevated macroeconomic risks, and limited visibility leave the turnaround in its early stages.

BMO Capital analyst Andrew Strelzik lowered the firm’s price target to $13 from $22 while maintaining an Outperform rating.

Strelzik described the quarter as showing “better comps but a worse sales mix.”

BMO also pointed to limited visibility into an improvement in amusement sales, intensifying consumer pressure, and another leadership transition.

Dave & Buster’s reshapes leadership

The turnaround is happening alongside a broader reshuffling of Dave & Buster’s management team.

Amanda Busby joined the company in August as chief operating officer.

Rachel Morgan was promoted to chief legal and administrative officer and corporate secretary, expanding her responsibilities to include oversight of the legal and human resources organizations.

Aldo Rosales was promoted to chief strategy and revenue management officer.

Those changes followed other recent executive additions, including Jeremy Tucker as chief marketing officer, Kevin Fish as chief technology and digital officer, and Derek Sample as chief accounting officer.

Management said the leadership overhaul is intended to improve operations, accelerate digital initiatives, and restore sales growth.

Dave & Buster’s is also becoming more selective about expansion.

The company opened seven domestic stores during the first half of fiscal 2026 but plans to open only four more during the remainder of the year and five during fiscal 2027.

Dave & Buster’s currently operates 250 company-owned stores, including 184 Dave & Buster’s locations and 66 Main Event locations, along with six international franchise stores.

The company has also identified $15 million in cost savings expected to be realized over the next 12 months.

It is targeting at least double this amount as it searches for additional expenses that can be removed without affecting customers.

Dave & Buster’s is now trying to convert its stronger food sales, better value, and a revamped leadership team to revive its amusement business that has historically been at the center of the chain.

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During the Covid pandemic, Disney permitted corporate staffers to start working remotely to help slow the spread of the virus.

By March 2023, then-Disney CEO Bob Iger began requiring employees to return to working from corporate offices four days a week, but with some exceptions for tech team members. In an internal memo announcing the change, which was unveiled in a CNBC report, Iger emphasized that in-person collaboration is crucial.

“In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together, nor the opportunity to grow professionally by learning from leaders and mentors,” said Iger.

Disney scales back in-office policy exceptions 

Since then, Disney has decided to shift gears. The entertainment giant is now expanding its in-office mandate, requiring more corporate employees to work in the office four days a week, according to a new Business Insider report. 

On Sept. 14, Disney reportedly informed some remote product and tech employees, who had previously been exempt from the in-office mandate, that they are now required to comply with it. 

The company is also now threatening to fire employees who fail to work in the office four days a week. Before this change, Disney had allegedly been laissez-faire about enforcing the rule. Some managers would strictly monitor if employees were following it, while others were more relaxed about it. 

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According to Business Insider, Disney’s latest move is intended to reinforce its existing in-office policy, rather than signal a change in strategy. 

Disney’s decision to expand its in-office mandate comes after Josh D’Amaro became CEO of the company in March, replacing Iger, who held the position for nearly 18 years across two separate tenures. 

Shortly after stepping into the role, D’Amaro laid off roughly 1,000 employees in April. In a memo sent to employees announcing the job cuts, which Variety reported, he mentioned that he aims to “streamline” the company’s operations. 

“Over the past several months, we have looked at ways in which we can streamline our operations in various parts of the company to ensure we deliver the world-class creativity and innovation our fans value and expect from Disney,” said D’Amaro in the memo.

“Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs,” he continued. 

Disney isn’t the only company reducing remote work

Disney’s in-office policy update also follows the lead of other large U.S. companies, some of which have enforced stricter return-to-office mandates. 

For instance, in March 2025, Dell began requiring employees who live within an hour of an office to return to in-person work five days a week, a move it claims will help the company keep up with the fast pace of tech innovation.

However, its enforcement of the policy wasn’t very smooth as it later had to crack down on employees who reportedly ignored the mandate.

That same month, J.P. Morgan Chase also rolled out a return-to-office mandate requiring employees to work in the office five days a week. 

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The updated rule, however, sparked backlash from employees, with some even launching a petition demanding that the banking giant restore its previous hybrid work policy, which allowed them to work from the office three or four days a week. 

In January 2025, AT&T also enforced a return-to-office policy, mandating corporate employees to work in the office five days a week to improve collaboration and innovation. 

It even went so far as to use a tracking system to monitor employees’ in-office attendance. The company later scaled back its use of the system in September that year after employees expressed concerns about its accuracy. 

Many companies nationwide already have plans to reduce remote work this year. According to a survey from ResumeBuilder.com, one in eight companies plan to increase the number of required days in the office in 2026, while three in 10 won’t allow remote work. 

Reasons behind reducing remote work include strengthening company culture, boosting productivity, maximizing office space use and encouraging workers to quit. 

“If hiring slows or layoffs rise in 2026, strict RTO (return to office) policies may clash with broader labor market trends,” said Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at ResumeBuilder.com, in a statement. “Employees may comply short-term, but resentment and turnover will rise once the market rebounds.”

Related: T-Mobile makes striking workforce shift amid fight for customers

In fact, 43% of Americans said in July 2026 that they plan to cancel at least one streaming service in the next three months, according to industry data from Reviews.org. 

As the current economic environment pressures consumers to reassess discretionary spending habits, the key debate has grown from whether to cut cables to deciding between paid streaming tiers and free ad-supported TV.  

Moreover, cord-cutters who left traditional cable for live TV streaming services are increasingly encountering familiar frustrations: steady price increases paired with shrinking channel lineups. 

YouTube TV cancels 3 channels 

Starting Sept. 30, Google’s YouTube TV will officially pull three channels from its lineup: Court TV, Tastemade (including Tastemade Español and Tastemade 4K), and political news network The Young Turks, as reported by Cord Cutters News. 

 In an email to subscribers, YouTube TV said:

“We are writing to let you know that starting September 30, 2026, Court TV, Tastemade, and The Young Turks channels will no longer be available on YouTube TV. This includes live content or content in your Library that you may have recorded from these channels.”

The streaming service added that users can continue to watch these channels directly on YouTube. 

Canceled channels detail and availability: 

• Tastemade: A culinary and lifestyle network focused on global food culture, travel programming, and original recipes for home cooks.
  • Where to watch: Available on paid services (Prime Video, DIRECTV, Fubo, Philo, Sling TV) as well as free platforms including The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus, and Xumo Play.
• Court TV: Founded in 1991, this legal news network is known for gavel-to-gavel live trial coverage, expert courtroom analysis, and true-crime documentaries.
  • Where to watch: Streaming on DIRECTV and Fubo, or completely free via Pluto TV, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.
• The Young Turks: A flagship progressive news and commentary program launched by Cenk Uygur that analyzes daily headlines, politics, and culture.
  • Where to watch: Free to stream on its flagship YouTube channel, as well as free FAST channels detailed on TYT’s platform guide (such as Samsung TV Plus and Xumo Play). 

Subscribers react to the news of losing 3 channels 

Across Reddit communities, subscribers’ reaction to losing Court TV, Tastemade, and The Young Turks is somewhat indifferent. 

Out of the three departing networks, Tastemade generated the most genuine disappointment in one Reddit thread, with several subscribers expressing sadness over losing comfort shows like Struggle Meals and Andrew Zimmern’s Wild Game Kitchen. 

Tastemade’s loyal viewers praised its niche food programming, prompting the official Tastemade Reddit account to step into the thread and reassure fans that its content remains free to stream on standard YouTube.

“We agree! You can watch our channel on most of the other free streaming platforms and many of our shows (and future episodes) are available for free on our YouTube channels,” wrote Tastemade. 

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The primary reason subscribers are largely unbothered is that all three are FAST channels. Viewers quickly pointed out that these networks are already accessible for free on standalone apps. 

Rather than being upset over losing the content, a few subscribers shared frustration that YouTube TV was using paid subscription fees to carry channels that cost nothing elsewhere.

“I just never understood why they opted to add FAST onto a paid app. All 3 channels are available free of charge on multiple platforms,” wrote user djmightybri79. 

On the other hand, another group of subscribers expressed minor annoyance, not over the content itself disappearing, but over the loss of DVR convenience (having live news or food shows under one central guide and DVR interface without needing to switch apps).

YouTube TV’s recent moves to retain subscribers 

Despite price hikes pushing its main plan to $82.99 a month, YouTube TV earlier this year launched generous, lower-priced packages to retain subscribers. 

I previously reported how the streaming service provider introduced 12 themed options allowing viewers to pay strictly for the channel genres they watch while keeping unlimited DVR.

YouTube TV tiered options:

• Entertainment for $54.99
• Sports for $64.99
• Entertainment + Family for $62.99
• News + Family for $62.99
• Sports + Entertainment for $71.99
• Sports + Family for $71.99
• Sports + News for $71.99
• News + Entertainment + Family for $69.99
• Sports + Entertainment + Family for $77.99
• Sports + News + Entertainment for $77.99
• Sports + News + Family for $77.99

To combat churn, the platform also added sharp promotional deals. New sign-ups received intro rates from $44.99 to $67.99 per month. Existing members trying to cancel unlocked hidden retention discounts of $10 to $20 off their monthly bill.

The live TV service rolled out these choices gradually across user profiles. While unbundling offers meaningful savings, even the $55 tier faces stiff competition from free streaming alternatives. 

In an article for MakeUseOf, tech writer Bryan M. Wolfe detailed how he canceled his $82.99 monthly YouTube TV subscription after realizing his daily viewing habits didn’t justify the cost. By replacing the platform with free ad-supported services like Pluto TV and Tubi alongside standard YouTube, he successfully replicated his routine channel-surfing and news viewing at zero monthly expense.

Nonetheless, the platform is betting these customizable plans will keep viewers from canceling the service. 

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Reprising her role as Gillian Owens, the free-spirited sibling accidentally responsible for murder in the film adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s bestselling Practical Magic series, Kidman often “freezes people out” by writing their names on paper and putting the pieces into her refrigerator’s ice cube tray.

Witch is a role that seems tailor-made for the preternaturally talented Oscar and Emmy-winner. After starring alongside Sandra Bullock in the first installment of Practical Magic (1998), Kidman also played Isabel Bigelow, a real-life witch looking to live a lower-profile life in Bewitched (2005).

Kidman has revealed that her favorite spells are actually love spells, which could explain the string of high-profile romances that keep the star in the headlines even when she’s not on screen.

As a then-unknown actor, Kidman first charmed megastar Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder (1990). The couple wed that same year and were married for nearly 11 years until their divorce in 2001. Her most recent relationship was with country crooner Keith Urban, whom Kidman married in 2006. But in 2025, Kidman filed for divorce from her husband of 20 years amid rumors of infidelity. That divorce was finalized on January 6, 2026.

Kidman and Urban agreed to waive all rights of spousal and child support during their divorce proceedings; after all, both were world-famous stars with substantial fortunes of their own.

However, with four decades of blockbuster acting and producing credits to her name — in TV and film — Kidman’s net worth is rumored to be more than three times her ex’s.

So, just how much money does Nicole Kidman have in 2026?

@britishvogue

#NicoleKidman and #SandraBullock reveal how to make everyday life magical at the London premiere of PracticalMagic2.

♬ original sound – British Vogue

Nicole Kidman’s net worth in 2026

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Nicole Kidman has an estimated net worth of $250 million in 2026. Kidman has ranked among Hollywood’s highest-paid actors since starring in To Die For in 1995; in 2024, she even topped Forbes’ list of world’s highest paid actors.

Nicole Kidman’s film salaries

Kidman’s blockbuster paydays didn’t end with the big screen. While salary details for many of her more recent films have remained undisclosed, her paychecks for television have been nearly as impressive.

Not only did Kidman co-star in the HBO series Big Little Lies, but she was also a producer. She reportedly took home between $250,000 and $350,000 per episode during Season 1 and $1 million per episode during Season 2 — and those figures don’t include her producing fees.

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Kidman also made $1 million per episode for Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, and $1 million per episode of the HBO series The Undoing.

But some of Kidman’s most valuable work may happen behind the camera. In 2018, Kidman’s production company, Blossom Films, signed a multi-year first-look deal with Amazon Studios to develop both television series and theatrical films. This contract has already yielded the dramatic miniseries Expats, Holland, and Scarpetta, with another series, Girls and Their Horses, currently in the works.

Who is richer: Nicole Kidman or Keith Urban?

Urban may have written a song called “Parallel Line,” but when it comes to wealth, there’s no comparison. Kidman’s estimated net worth is more than three times that of her former husband.

In 2026, Celebrity Net Worth estimates Urban’s net worth at around $75 million. His fortune stems from his country-pop music career, concert performances, and stints as a judge on American Idol and The Voice Australia.

Nicole Kidman’s early life and acting career

Kidman is famous for her Australian accent, but she was actually born in Hawaii, on June 20, 1967. Her parents, Antony and Janelle Kidman, were living there on student visas. Kidman also has a younger sister, Antonia, who is a TV host in Australia.

When the family returned to Australia a few years later, Kidman began taking ballet. Instantly hooked, she began performing in local theater and has admitted that while she is naturally very shy, acting helped her gain confidence.

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She attended Phillips Street Theatre during her high school years, where she met her friend Naomi Watts. There, she was encouraged to pursue acting full time, and she dropped out of high school at age 16 in 1983.

Shortly thereafter, Kidman landed her first film role in the holiday movie Bush Christmas (1983). One year later, she was cast in the Disney series Five Mile Creek. Five years later, she scored her breakthrough as grieving mother Rae Ingram in the psychological thriller Dead Calm (1989).

Nicole Kidman’s personal life

Kidman famously met Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder; they got married when Kidman was just 23 years old and would go on to co-star in two more films together: Far & Away and Eyes Wide Shut. They also adopted two children together: a daughter, Isabella (b. 1992), and a son, Connor (b. 1995), although they reportedly have a strained relationship with Kidman.

Kidman has since reflected on how young she was during their marriage, telling Vanity Fair “I was a child, really, when I got married… And I needed to grow up.”

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Four years after her divorce from Cruise, Kidman met Urban in 2005, at the G’Day USA Gala in Los Angeles. She revealed she instantly developed a crush on the heartthrob singer, but he didn’t call her for four months. They married the next year.

In 2008, their eldest daughter, Sunday Rose, was born, and in 2010, their younger daughter, Faith Margaret, came along.

Kidman has remained mum about why her marriage to Urban ended. While there have been rumors of infidelity, she summed up her current situation simply, telling Vogue, “The future, it’s completely unknown to me right now. It’s strange.” But she remains optimistic, adding that she can either “curl up” or “go forward with an enormous amount of hope.”

Nicole Kidman’s real estate portfolio

According to Architectural Digest, Kidman and Urban’s multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio was divided in their divorce. Kidman kept the couple’s $3.47 million Northumberland, Tennessee, compound, which has seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and, naturally, a home theater.

Kidman also got the keys to their $4.7 million Beverly Hills mansion, which has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and a wraparound deck on the second floor that’s perfect for entertaining.

Across the Pacific in Australia, Kidman also reportedly kept the circa-1878 farmhouse the couple purchased in 2008 for an undisclosed sum. It boasts an indoor pool and a separate guest cottage.

It is unclear who retained the former couple’s $4 million Sydney penthouse, $10 million Manhattan mansion, or $3.5 million TriBeCa townhouse — but Urban’s got to live somewhere, right?

Related: Dolly Parton’s net worth: How the ‘Queen of Country Music’ built her wealth

Entertainment companies spend years deciding what you see and when, because scarcity turns a product launch into an event.

The tools for protecting scarcity are legal. When unreleased footage escapes, the studio sends copyright notices, platforms pull the clips, and the timeline goes back under company control.

That system works for exactly one reason. The studio owns the frames.

Rockstar Games, the Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) label behind Grand Theft Auto, has run that playbook harder than anyone. Two trailers in nearly three years. No press demos, no hands-on previews, no early code.

Then August arrived. Starting Aug. 18, an account posting as CyberLeek began publishing unreleased gameplay clips and apparent images of the full Leonida map.

Take-Two moved quickly. The publisher filed two DMCA subpoenas in the Southern District of New York on Aug. 20, demanding that Microsoft (MSFT) and Discord identify whoever sits behind the persona, according to Tom’s Hardware.

Those subpoenas are working as designed. And they cannot touch the actual problem.

Most of what is now circulating online under the words “GTA 6 leak” was never Rockstar footage in the first place. It was generated.

Take-Two’s takedown power stops where the fakes begin

A copyright notice requires a copyright. Take-Two can strip a stolen clip from a real build off X or Reddit within hours because the company owns that build.

An artificial intelligence (AI) video of a Vice City street that does not exist in Grand Theft Auto VI is not Take-Two property. It is someone else’s fabrication wearing Rockstar’s brand, and the standard legal remedy does not cleanly apply.

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That gap has produced an odd side effect. Whether a clip survives has become the fan community’s most reliable authentication test.

Real leaked footage vanishes fast. Fakes stay up.

Rockstar has said nothing publicly about the leaks. It has not needed to. The takedown filings did the confirming, which is exactly the dynamic that leaves everything still online looking suspiciously legitimate.

The volume is the harder half. A search for leaks now surfaces AI slop about as often as genuine material, Kotaku reported, noting that some of it looks “pretty convincing at a quick glance.”

AI fake leaks are now the cheapest attention trade online

None of this began in August. It has been building since the first trailer landed in December 2023.

A fan account that had spent months posting AI images engineered to resemble leaked screenshots issued a public apology on April 24 after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Take-Two, according to GTA BOOM.

Related: Take-Two’s real GTA 6 jackpot may not be the game itself

The economics explain the persistence. A convincing fake costs a few cents and a prompt, and it competes for the same attention as footage that took a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.

Platforms also have little reason to intervene. A fabricated clip infringes no copyright, names no real person and defames nobody, which puts it outside nearly every automated category that actually triggers a removal.

Here is how the past three weeks actually unfolded.

• Aug. 18: CyberLeek publishes the first gameplay clips and alleged Leonida map images, according to GameSpot. 
• Aug. 19: A malicious gta6_installer.exe sample appears one day later, according to Malwarebytes.
• Aug. 20: Take-Two files two DMCA subpoenas seeking device identifiers and login records, according to Tom’s Hardware.
• Aug. 25: Leaked footage reaches roughly 17 minutes in total, according to Cyber Magazine.
• Aug. 27: Rockstar premieres a 27-minute extended look on Netflix (NFLX), according to Variety. 

Rockstar’s answer was to flood the zone with the real thing. The showcase was “captured entirely from in-game footage on PlayStation 5,” the company said on its Newswire.

What the fake leak wave costs Take-Two shareholders

When I lined the leak timeline up against Take-Two’s own investor filings, the mismatch was hard to miss. The company is running a precision marketing calendar into a channel it no longer controls.

Take-Two posted net bookings of $1.39 billion in the quarter ended June 30, with recurrent consumer spending accounting for 84% of that total, according to its fiscal first-quarter results.

Management reiterated fiscal 2027 net bookings guidance of $8 billion to $8.2 billion, roughly 20% growth, in the same filing.

Nearly all of that growth assumes one game lands on one date at $79.99.

Grand Theft Auto V has sold more than 230 million units worldwide, the company told analysts. That install base is the audience every counterfeit screenshot is competing to reach.

My analysis says the fake-leak flood is not a revenue event. It is a trust event, and trust is what a record pre-order book is priced on.

Every fabricated clip promising a feature that will not ship builds an expectation Rockstar never set. Those expectations arrive as refund requests and one-star reviews in the week the company can least afford them.

There is a second cost, and it lands on readers rather than shareholders. A malicious installer disguised as a GTA 6 build surfaced on Aug. 19, one day after the first genuine material began spreading, according to Malwarebytes.

If you go looking for leaked footage between now and November, the likeliest outcome is not spoilers. It is an infostealer.

Why the noise only gets louder before Nov. 19

Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for Nov. 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. Prediction market traders have put the odds of another delay in the low teens, according to Polymarket, though that number moves.

The marketing calendar from here is dense. More screenshots, more previews, a likely review embargo in late October or early November.

Each of those releases hands the fake-leak economy fresh raw material to work from. Official screenshots are exactly what an image model needs to produce a convincing counterfeit of the next one.

That is the trap. Rockstar cannot go quiet, because silence is what let the fakes fill the vacuum in August. It also cannot go loud without feeding them.

The Netflix partnership shows the company knows it. Putting the showcase behind a platform with verified distribution was a way to make one piece of footage unambiguously real.

The practical takeaway is smaller and more useful than the legal fight. Treat anything labeled a leak as fabricated until a takedown notice proves otherwise, and never install a file promising early access.

Take-Two will win the CyberLeek case or it will not. Either way, the counterfeits stay up, because there is nothing to sue. The company spent 13 years controlling a story it will now have to share with anyone holding a prompt window.

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