Disney Streaming Deal Will Blow Up The Cable Universe

It’s official. The streaming wars have begun. All of the big players have drawn battle lines.Disney announced April 11 that its Plus service will arrive in November with a formidable arsenal of existing TV shows and movies, the promise of exclusive content, and a death blow. Investors should get ready. This is going to get bloody. Few will survive.But a handful of companies stand to profit handsomely as the business of streaming content over the internet grows by leaps and bounds.None of this should be a huge surprise. The House of Mouse has been planning this fight for years. In the past, the company was willing to rent out its huge catalogue of Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars films to Netflix. The pair were blissfully codependent.The streaming giant got quality content, something its original programming badly lacked. Disney got secondary distribution, and money, lots of money.The deal, struck in 2012, according to a report from CNBC, paid Disney as estimated $300 million annually.