Disney's planned deal to acquire many parts of Twenty-First Century Fox actually solves the media giant's problems with sports network ESPN, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday.
Disney has suffered from some subscriber losses at ESPN as consumers switch to skinnier cable bundles. The company intends to launch a separate streaming service for ESPN in 2018.
"It gets rid of the ESPN problem," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "This is a subscriber story and we've had subscriber growth go down, which was ESPN. Suddenly, you put all the subscriptions together and they can show up numbers."
Shares of Disney were more than 2 percent higher Thursday on news of the deal, while Fox was up over 4 percent. The deal will include Fox movie studios, Nat Geo, stakes in Sky and Hulu, and regional sports networks.
Cramer said the reason Disney's stock wasn't even higher is due to antitrust concerns. Antitrust is something "no one can game," he said.
"There is such an antitrust problem here given the fact that we know there's an antitrust problem with AT&T-Time Warner," he said.
"Boy, do I like the deal," added Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money." But "it's just such a wild card."
Cramer continued, "To be consistent they have to examine this deal."
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Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.
