7 Companies Owned by Disney

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The Walt Disney Company is a publicly traded company, so it is owned by its shareholders rather than by a family or a parent firm. It does own a large set of other businesses, many of them bought over the past three decades. Its seven largest acquisitions are Capital Cities/ABC, Fox Family Worldwide, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm, BAMTech and 21st Century Fox. Together they gave Disney ABC, a stake in ESPN, the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, Pixar’s animation library, the 20th Century Fox studios, FX, National Geographic, control of Hulu, and the streaming technology behind Disney+.

Who owns Disney?

Walt and Roy Disney founded the business in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. Today the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a member of the S&P 500. Anyone who holds DIS shares owns a fraction of the company: individual investors, mutual funds, ETFs and other institutions. The Disney family founded the company, but it is run by a board and a management team, most recently under CEO Bob Iger.

Disney’s major acquisitions in year order

How acquisitions fit Disney’s strategy

Disney still produces original content under its own name, but much of the intellectual property behind its biggest film and TV franchises was bought rather than built. Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar each came with characters and stories that Disney can turn into films, series, theme park attractions and merchandise.

A second group of deals bought distribution: ABC, ESPN and the 21st Century Fox networks, alongside Disney’s own Disney Channel. A third bought technology. BAMTech and the Fox assets (including the Hulu stake) were the building blocks for Disney’s move into direct-to-consumer streaming with Disney+.

1. Capital Cities/ABC (1995)

• Type of business: Media
• Price: $19 billion
• Announced: July 31, 1995

Capital Cities/ABC was itself the product of an earlier merger. In 1985, media company Capital Cities Communications bought the American Broadcasting Company for $3.5 billion. A decade later, Disney agreed to buy the combined company for $19 billion. At the time it was described as the second-largest corporate takeover on record.

The purchase brought Disney the ABC broadcast network, TV and radio stations, a stake in ESPN, interests in The History Channel, A&E Network and Lifetime Television, and a publishing group. Capital Cities/ABC was already distributing ESPN outside the U.S., so the deal also widened Disney’s international reach.

The strategic effect was larger than the asset list. With ABC added, Disney became the first media company with a major presence in all four main distribution systems of the era: filmed entertainment, cable television, broadcasting and telephone wires. The last of these came through a joint venture with three regional phone companies.

2. Fox Family Worldwide (2001)

• Type of business: Media and entertainment
• Price: About $5.2 billion ($2.9 billion in cash plus $2.3 billion in assumed debt)
• Announced: July 23, 2001; completed: October 24, 2001

Fox Family Worldwide started in 1995 as a joint venture between Haim Saban and Fox Broadcasting, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. By the time Disney bought it, the company had grown into one of the leading vertically integrated family and children’s entertainment businesses in the world.

Disney gained the U.S. Fox Family Channel, which had about 81 million subscribers, plus Fox Kids channels around the world. The deal also included rights to roughly 6,500 episodes of children’s and family programming and rights to air Major League Baseball games.

Observers saw the purchase as Disney keeping pace with rivals during a wave of media consolidation. Disney renamed the channel ABC Family. It later rebranded it as Freeform, a change announced in 2015.

3. Pixar Animation Studios (2006)

• Type of business: Computer animation studio
• Price: $7.4 billion
• Completed: January 24, 2006

Pixar’s roots lie in another company Disney would later buy. In 1986, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs bought the computer animation division of Lucasfilm, which had made major advances in animation technology, and turned it into Pixar. Under Jobs, Pixar became the leading producer of animated feature films. It made “Toy Story,” the first computer-animated feature film, and hits such as “Finding Nemo.”

The $7.4 billion acquisition made Disney an instant leader in computer animation. Under Disney ownership, Pixar has released “Cars,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E” and several “Toy Story” sequels.

4. Marvel Entertainment (2009)

• Type of business: Entertainment
• Price: $4 billion
• Announced: August 31, 2009

Marvel began in the 1930s as Timely Comics. Over the following decades the comic publisher changed names and owners several times and went through a bankruptcy filing. It emerged as a major creator of entertainment media with a library of about 5,000 characters, including Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

Disney used the $4 billion purchase to speed up the release of Marvel films. Box office hits that followed include “The Avengers” (2012), “Iron Man 3” (2013) and “Black Panther” (2018).

5. Lucasfilm (2012)

• Type of business: Film and TV production
• Price: $4.1 billion
• Announced: October 30, 2012

George Lucas founded Lucasfilm in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. The studio is best known for creating the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” franchises. It has also been a leader in special effects, sound and computer animation, the same line of work that produced Pixar.

The acquisition gave Disney the rights to those franchises. Disney then extended them beyond film, most visibly with “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge,” a themed area at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. That move into parks shows how Disney gets value from an acquired property in more than one segment.

6. BAMTech (2016 and 2017)

• Type of business: Streaming technology and services
• Price: $1 billion, paid in two installments, for a 33% stake; about $1.6 billion for an additional 42% stake
• Dates: August 9, 2016 (minority stake); August 8, 2017 (majority stake)

BAMTech grew out of Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the internet and interactive media company created by Major League Baseball. MLBAM began streaming live MLB games in 2002. Its technology went on to power HBO NOW as well as streaming services for the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, the PGA TOUR, WWE Network and Ice Network. BAMTech was spun off from MLBAM in 2015.

In 2016, Disney bought a 33% minority stake in BAMTech, which by then was a global leader in direct-to-consumer streaming, data analytics and commerce management. The deal included an option to take majority control. Disney exercised it in 2017, buying another 42% for about $1.6 billion, which brought its holding to 75%.

Of the seven deals, this was the cheapest, but it mattered a great deal strategically. BAMTech supplied the infrastructure Disney used to launch ESPN+ in 2018 and Disney+ in November 2019. Disney+ is a paid subscription service that competes with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

7. 21st Century Fox (2019)

• Type of business: Global media and entertainment
• Price: $71 billion
• Completed: March 20, 2019

21st Century Fox came out of the 2013 breakup of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s publishing and entertainment group. The publishing businesses kept the News Corp name. The entertainment side, including the 20th Century Fox film studio, became a separate company called 21st Century Fox.

When Disney bought 21st Century Fox for $71 billion, the deal was structured in two parts. The entertainment business Disney acquired was renamed TFCF Corp. Many of the news and broadcast assets were spun off into a new, separately owned public company, Fox Corporation (ticker FOX).

Disney came away with:

• The 20th Century Fox film and television studios
• The FX and National Geographic cable networks
• Star, the international TV business
• A 30% interest in Hulu, which raised Disney’s Hulu stake to 60%

Disney also kept perpetual rights to certain Fox brand names, including 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight. The company later shortened the studio names to 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures.

Does Disney own Hulu? Yes. After the Fox deal, Disney bought the remaining 33% of Hulu from Comcast in 2023 in a transaction valued at $8.61 billion.

Does Disney own Fox? Partly, and the split matters. Disney owns the Fox film and TV studios and the cable networks listed above. It does not own Fox News or the Fox broadcast network, which went to Fox Corporation. The Murdoch family’s interests in those businesses continued through Fox Corporation and News Corp, not through Disney.

What Disney does not own

Several big entertainment brands are often assumed to belong to Disney but do not:

• Fox News and the Fox broadcast network: Fox Corporation, spun off during the 2019 deal
• HBO: Warner Bros. Discovery. BAMTech only provided streaming technology for HBO NOW.
• Warner Bros.: Warner Bros. Discovery
• DC Comics: Warner Bros. Discovery
• Cartoon Network: Warner Bros. Discovery
• Paramount: a separate company, not part of Disney

How the acquired companies fit Disney’s business today

Disney reports its operations in three segments. Most of the acquired businesses sit in the first two.

Entertainment

This segment covers media networks, studio entertainment, and direct-to-consumer and international operations. It holds the Disney brand itself, ABC, Hulu, National Geographic, FX and the studios bought with Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. Streaming services built on BAMTech technology belong here as well. Entertainment is Disney’s largest source of revenue.

Sports

ESPN anchors the Sports segment, along with ESPN+. Disney’s ESPN stake dates back to the Capital Cities/ABC deal.

Experiences

Parks, resorts, cruises, experiences and consumer products make up the third segment. Acquired franchises appear here too, through attractions such as Galaxy’s Edge and through merchandise built on Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar characters.

For its 2025 fiscal year, which ended September 27, 2025, Disney reported revenue of $94.43 billion and net income of $13.43 billion.

Investing in Disney stock

Because Disney is publicly traded, you can buy its shares through a brokerage account. You can also get exposure indirectly through mutual funds or ETFs that hold the stock, including funds that track the S&P 500. A share of Disney gives you a proportional stake in every business described above. There is no separate way for an outside investor to buy into Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm or Hulu on their own.

Disney pays a dividend. On November 13, 2025, the company declared a dividend of $1.50 per share, payable in two installments of $0.75: the first on January 15, 2026, and the second on July 22, 2026. Shareholders can take the dividend in cash or reinvest it through The Walt Disney Company Investment Plan. Dividend amounts and schedules are set by the board at each declaration, so a past declaration does not fix future payments.

The Bottom Line

For investors, owning DIS shares means owning a slice of every acquired business at once, since Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Hulu cannot be bought separately. Disney's growth since 1995 has leaned on buying franchises, distribution and streaming technology. Anyone sorting out which brands Disney controls should keep the 2019 Fox split in mind: Disney took the studios, FX and National Geographic, while Fox News stayed with Fox Corporation.