An acquisition like that might be as likely to throw Disney into chaos as anything and give Netflix a leg up on stealing market share, given the corporate history of very large acquisitions.

That also of course depends on what the Netflix growth profile looks like over time as well.

For example, does Netflix routinely still generate 15%-20% annual growth after they're up over $20 billion in sales? If so, there's nothing Disney can do to stay with them short of continuing to buy up the rest of the entertainment universe.

The global subscriber momentum Netflix has now is incredible. By the time Disney figures out exactly how all of their streaming pieces are going to fit together, Netflix might be up to 250 million global subscribers.

That's not quite the context. Netflix is rapidly growing sales and plowing its potential income into content expansion.

Disney has zero sales growth, with a large traditional investor base that expects profits to at a minimum not contract. That traditional investor base holds Disney to a particular standard that Netflix doesn't have to suffer (for now). Disney can't reinvest any more of their existing sales & profit toward content creation without subtracting from the profit figure they report. If they do that at any meaningful scale, the stock will crater.

Disney's situation is actually even worse than that, as the erosion of cable is eating into their solidly profitable TV business (especially ESPN). So they're facing a declining context on sales, profit and margin, and they can't afford to redirect a meaningful share of their existing profit.

Simply put, right now Disney has no sales growth to direct at new content investment. They have existing profit that is already allocated to placating investors that expect the net income statement to look great and expect the dividend to remain or increase. This is why Disney is looking to spend a vast sum to buy business expansion with Fox, to perhaps placate shareholders a while longer (how long will they tolerate zero growth otherwise?).

Netflix gets to operate on different terms of shareholder expectations than what Disney does.

Otherwise, Netflix would have a market cap about 90%-95% lower than it is right now, if Netflix (~220 PE) were being judged on a more near-term profit basis as Disney is (~14-15 PE). It's the exact same growth expectation benefit that is being given to Amazon ($3b net income) vs Walmart (~$14b net income).