Hulu + Live TV now has 3.2 million subscribers, according to figures released Tuesday by the Walt Disney Company.
Barring a disclosure of huge growth for Sling TV when parent company Dish Network reports its fourth-quarter earnings later this month, Hulu Live is now the biggest virtual MVPD on the market.
Sling TV, which debuted in early 2015 as the first vMVPD and has led the market since that time in subscribers, reported 2.686 million users as of the end of the third quarter.
Alphabet reported Tuesday that its vMVPD, YouTube TV, has surpassed 2 million, which would ostensibly rank it in the No. 3 position.
Related: Disney+ Jumps to 28.6M Subscribers, Exceeding Expectations
For Hulu and Disney, the virtual pay TV number was only one impressive figure for an overall OTT portfolio, all of which are riding the momentum of new red-hot SVOD service Disney+.
That $6.99 service, which debuted in North America on November 12, now has 28.6 million paid users, Disney told investors, coming in on the high side of analysts’ projections.
Hulu’s portfolio of services are being bundled with Disney+, and they’re riding the wave. Overall Hulu subscribers reached 30.4 million during the quarter, Disney said.
Up until last year, Hulu was a joint venture between Disney, Fox, Comcast/NBCUniversal and the erstwhile Time Warner Inc. With Disney now fully in control of the service, the conglomerate last week announced it is pulling the service into its direct-to-consumer group. Hulu CEO Randy Freer, meanwhile, is exiting the company.
