Shortly after completing its business combination with Disney’s Hulu + Live TV, sports-focused virtual MVPD Fubo on Monday reported Q3 results, with executives citing early traction for a recently debuted skinny pay TV package and expectations for a Disney-powered boost to ad sales in the future.
The completed transaction, which was announced at the start of the year coinciding with the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit brought on by Fubo against Disney and its Venu JV partners, gives Disney 70% control of the combined standalone entity (with the two vMVPDs continued to be offered as separate services).
But with the weight of Disney now backing it, Fubo sees a lot of upside – including international ambitions where it expects to collaborate with Disney in the not-to-distant future.
Before getting into some of the executive comments around that, here are a few results from Fubo’s third quarter 2025 earnings.
Fubo ended Q3 with 1.63 million North American subscribers, up 1.1% year-over-year and representing the highest Q3 subscriber result in the pay TV provider’s history.
Together with Hulu + Live TV’s base of about 4.3 million at last disclosure, the combined virtual MVPD businesses will have nearly 6 million subscribers – but again for now have said the two will continue to be offered as separate services. On the earnings call Fubo executives suggested there’s little overlap of Fubo’s sports-focused live streaming TV audience and Hulu + Live TV’s more general entertainment offering.
The period also marked Fubo’s second quarter in a row of positive Adjusted EBITDA, which totaled $6.9 million in Q3 and represents a $34.5 million improvement compared to the same period a year ago.
Still North American total quarterly revenue of $368.6 million was down 2.3% year-over-year.
Fubo narrowed its net loss year-over-year to $18.9 million in Q3. The virtual MVPD reported negative free cash flow of $9.4 million.
Speaking on Monday’s earnings call Fubo CEO David Gandler said that the health of the company’s underlying metrics also improved in Q3.
“[Free] trial starts increased, and conversions from trial to paid [subscribers] meaningfully improved year over year, while churn declined nearly 50% versus last year,” Gandler said in opening remarks.
Skinny sports TV package drives trials, conversions early on
Fubo also reported early positive signs for its sports-focused skinny pay TV package that debuted in August.
Dubbed Fubo Sports, the skinny bundle offers premium sports programming, including the majority of ESPN Unlimited content that it was allowed to ingest, and is priced below its other tiers at $55.99 per month.
Per Gandler, the skinny bundle “is driving record trial conversion” – and is another facet of the company’s strategy to offer consumers flexible options at different price points. As is the platform’s expansion of Pay-per-View offerings “which delivered double digit sales growth in October compared to the prior month,” he said.
As for the skinny sports bundle, Fubo CFO John Janedis noted it’s still early in market but the company feels good about where it’s priced. When the skinny package debuted it was available to about one-third of the U.S. but is now available in more than 80% and on its way to full distribution by year-end, he said.
And early signals suggest it’s not existing subscribers who are trading down from higher-priced Fubo packages, but rather the skinny bundle is attracting new users.
In the couple of months it’s been in market, “we see virtually no cannibalization and we think it’s really expanding our addressable market,” Janedis said.
In that short-term, he said it’s “performing as expected” in terms of delivering “better retention and lower churn” compared to Fubo’s Pro and Elite plans.
Gandler added that it “was a strong quarter across the board for all of our offers” but that the skinny bundle, in its early days, delivered in particular on starts of free trials and conversions to paid subscribers.
Other pay TV providers have also introduced skinnier bundles like DirecTV’s genre-focused packages and a slimmed-down sports bundle from Comcast.
Advertising 'a blemish' on Q3 but expects Disney-powered boost
In Q3 Fubo saw North American ad revenue drop 7% year-over-year to $25 million but anticipates a lot of advertising upside ahead with the power and scale of Disney behind it.
Janedis attributed the Q3 ad revenue decline mainly to the absence of certain content (Fubo dropped Univision channels at the end of last year and cited residual Maximum Effort channel revenue) as well as one-time benefits seen in the prior year period.
On the earnings call Gandler categorized advertising as “the only minor blemish” on an otherwise strong quarter, adding “that’s a high class problem given our combination with Hulu Live.”
Post-combination, Disney is taking over ad sales for Fubo and as its inventory is integrated into the Disney ecosystem and ad server, “we should see pretty strong results relative to where we are today,” the CEO said.
It’s transitioning Fubo’s ad sales team over to Disney and Gandler noted that once Fubo is part of the Disney ecosystem, the live streamer’s sports programming ad inventory like football, basketball, baseball and more will likely move over to Disney systems – a process he said hopefully happens sooner than later but is targeted for some time in Q1 given technical integrations necessary.
“There's probably some pretty significant upside from where we are today relative to where we could be, if you think about Disney sports, CPMs and their ability to just use their scale to fill our [ad] avails,” Gandler commented.
International in play
Another area where Fubo leaders are bullish and expect to benefit from the new combination under Disney is international markets, where Fubo’s focused on a unified platform and expects to partner together.
It doesn’t get as much attention but Fubo has an international presence from its purchase of France-based live streamer Molotov back in 2021. On Monday, Gandler said he’s “very bullish on the Rest of the World”
In Q3 Fubo’s international (or what the vMVPD classifies as Rest of the World or ROW) revenue totaled $8.6 million and it ended the quarter with 342,000 paid ROW subscribers.
Internationally, Gandler said Fubo’s unified platform is “almost ready to go” and it’ll be migrating Molotov onto the Fubo platform, which that boasts advanced user experience features and personalization.
As for Disney, he noted the company has a large base of international subscribers and thinks there’s opportunity to drive significant growth for Fubo.
“We’ll look to partner with Disney internationally,” Gandler affirmed when asked by investment analysts if there are cross-bundling opportunities with Disney outside of the U.S. “I think this is going to create a tremendous amount of value for both companies.”
While Fubo can benefit from Disney’s scale and general entertainment programming, the CEO said Disney+ will benefit from local programming that Fubo can provide in markets like France.
He cited three to four international markets that they’d like to start with in the next 18 to 24 months “and then quickly move into other markets,” reiterating that international is a core aspect to Fubo’s business over time.
“We think that we can be a global leader in the live TV streaming space. There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that still value live sports, live news, and we're going to focus on developing that strategy in the short term,” Gandler said. “And I think everyone on both sides is very excited about that.”
And he emphasized that Fubo’s ambitions have not changed following the combination with Hulu + Live TV.
“We want to be the world's largest live TV provider, and we're using streaming to make a smarter, cheaper and more profitable TV product,” he said.