Failing Disney CEO Bob Iger Made $31 Million

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 17, 7:30AM EST

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Failing Disney CEO Bob Iger Made $31 Million — © Jesse Grant / Getty Images

As Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS | DIS Price Prediction) stumbled through a horrible year financially, CEO Bob Iger, who was brought back to fix the company in November 2021, made $31.6 million. He ran Disney for 15 years until 2020. Investors hoped he would bring the magic back to Disney’s businesses and its financial results.

In the past year, which includes the time since he returned, Disney’s stock is down 6%, while the market is 19% higher. Troubles with Disney’s streaming business, legacy media and movie units have all hindered turnaround efforts. (Discover the 20 best animated films of all time.)

Iger’s base salary was $865,485, and the balance of his compensation was stock awards and options. According to the company’s new proxy, his pay was also 595 times that of the median pay for Disney workers.

Iger’s tenure shows his decision to launch Disney+ in November 2019 with a base price of $6.99 a month was a mistake. Rivals Amazon and Netflix charged almost twice that. Disney lost billions of dollars, even as its subscriber count soared.

In the most recent quarter, Disney’s direct-to-consumer business lost $420 million. The division includes streaming. In the same quarter a year ago, the loss was $1.4 billion. Disney+ had 150 million subscribers at the end of the quarter, up by 4 million from the previous quarter. Disney said it would increase prices, but this could add to “churn,” an industry term for cancellations.

ESPN, once a cash cow, has stopped growing. Disney may bring in a partner in an attempt to reverse that. Legacy media, which include ABC, are up against a difficult advertising market. Disney’s movie business, once the industry leader in revenue, has stumbled and did not have a major hit in 2022.

Disney also nominated a new slate of board members in part to keep raider Nelson Peltz’s nominees off the board. Peltz has taken a stock position, arguing Disney is poorly run. If so, Bob Iger got $31 million last year to run it.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.