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This may hopefully improve the quality issues their parks have been facing while under Chapek's "penny pinching" ideology.

by rabuse 4y ago

tim-- 4y ago
Bob Iger has had a lot of vanity projects over at Disney. The amount of debt that was put on after Disney acquired Fox (and not even all the parts they really wanted - Comcast got that!) is pretty high. A good overview can be found on this video essay: https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 Disney's long term debt for 2020 was $52.917B, a 38.78% increase from 2019. Disney's long term debt for 2019 was $38.129B, a 123.19% increase from 2018. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-te... Yes, Disney is slowly throwing money at the problem and reducing it's debt, but it's still a pretty high load. Still not as bad as Warner Bro's Discovery though. Warner Bros Discovery long term debt for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $48.612B, a 236.74% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-di...
- rabuse 4y ago
  Thanks for this.
- divbzero 4y ago
  The acquisition of Fox assets dwarfs Disney’s previous acquisitions of content: 2019 $71.3 B for 21st Century Fox 2012 $4.1 B for Lucasfilm 2009 $4.2 B for Marvel 2006 $6.3 B for Pixar As well as Disney’s other billion dollar acquisitions: 2016 $2.9 B for BAMTech 2001 $2.9 B for Fox Family 1999 $1.8 B for Infoseek 1996 $19.0 B for Capital Cities/ABC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney Bob Iger must have been eager to bulk up before the launch of Disney+?
  - tim-- 4y ago
    Which is understandable. 21st Century Fox was a much larger company than any of the other three mentioned companies - with sales offices, distribution deals with other studios, physical movie studios, large television production units (especially that output content in the UK/AU). 21st Century Fox also owned the rights to hundreds of movies (Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dr. Seuss) and plenty of television (1/3 of Hulu, The Simpsons). They also had the movie rights to some of the Marvel characters. I don't know how much that was worth to Igor, but it seems that he really wants to get the family all back under one roof. It's interesting that you mention the ABC acquisition - in today's money that would cost $36.09 billion - just roughly half of the Fox acquisition.
- mdasen 4y ago
  In terms of annual revenue, Disney has $83B against $29B for Paramount Global, $30B for Netflix, and $13B for Warner Bros Discovery. So Disney's debt is 0.6x revenue while Warner Bros Discovery's debt is 3.7x revenue. If Disney's debt is a problem, WBD is drowning. What did Comcast get other than the 39% of Sky that Fox owned? The Fox Sports RSN went to Sinclair. I can appreciate the issues around debt, but Disney also acquired a huge amount of IP and market control in entertainment in the deal. They've left the Fox broadcast networks without a TV studio for their content (and first-run is becoming less important in the era of streaming). They've gotten so many of the most important IP franchises out there. They've become by far the largest movie studio. In an era where entertainment is becoming vertically integrated from creation to streaming, it seems like Disney has locked down so much of the future. We see how others are struggling. Paramount is trying to make the most of Star Trek and is the smallest major movie studio. Warner Bros Discovery is an also-ran with HBO Max - and having trouble figuring out the way forward with HBO Max/Discovery+/(the canceled) CNN+. WBD is also struggling with many of their franchises fizzling out: the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts universe is mired by JK Rowling's problematic politics and Ezra Miller's many issues; they seem to be having trouble getting their DC properties to perform how they'd like having canceled Batgirl when it was almost finished and talking about refocusing the franchise. Sony is an independent studio, but lacks the integrated platform that the other 4 have. Comcast/NBCUniversal is still trying to figure out what Peacock is and having trouble even attracting free users. Iger talked about making the call to buy the IP needed to really create a vertically integrated company that would be able to support a streaming service without licensing lots of outside content. It started with Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel who gave Disney a huge amount of content and talent. Fox was expensive, but also gave Disney the rest of the Marvel universe (except Spiderman) along with so much more content and a huge amount of control of the box office and TV. Disney is in a very strong position relative to their competitors. I think Disney is going to look pretty good in a decade. The economies of scale of running a large streaming service seem likely to help Disney a lot (having many more customers paying for the same content and allowing you to afford more of it). That's not to say Paramount, WBD, and others can't compete, but it does seem like Disney owns so much more which lets them offer more and secures their position. People got Netflix because it offered more and it's hard to see how Paramount or WBD or NBCUniversal could offer as much as Disney could. Now, Disney will try and figure out what the minimum it can offer while keeping users is, but they have such a depth of content that it puts them in the driver's seat a bit.
- dibt 4y ago
  Remember Toys-To-Life? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys-to-life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys-to-life I wonder if that was Bob Iger. Or maybe he was smart enough to dump it.
fasthands9 4y ago
I dont have the historic knowledge of the parks change but I have been often in the last years as a friend of mine has employee passes. I found them to be exceptionally clean with friendly staff. Leagues ahead of other parks. By far the worst part of the experience was that it was too crowded. Raising prices or limiting annual pass holders would help solve this but I feel like that falls into the penny pinching category. Lower attendance cap would also help but would be surprised if they did that given it is capping your income.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Starting to charge for parking at the resorts, continuously increasing food prices, still requiring park reservations, and the virtual queue[0] are some of the biggest downsides of the past few years attributed to Chapek. 0: which was instated to prevent 4+ hour wait times for Rise of the Resistance
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    It just seems like these complains have a "Its too crowded no one goes there anymore" vibe. I feel like maybe the nickel and diming is not worth it - but fundamentally it seems like they need to lower the daily attendance and probably the easiest way to do that will keeping income stable is to raise ticket prices.
- InTheArena 4y ago
  Gee, if only someone had an unbelievably massive amount of land in Florida, and Long Beach, with which to open a new gate. I mean other than universal
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    I do think this is the best option. Disneyland is cramped but it appears they will be given land to expand soon. I think they are worried a third US park would eat into the brand - but have always been a bit surprised they haven't tried to do one in Texas. There is a lot of land there that is cheap and geographically could serve different audience.
dawnerd 4y ago
I don’t think it will since a lot of these changes were started under Iger. Chapek became CEO at the worst possible time and had to deal with park shutdowns and staffing issues. Of course there were going to be service cutbacks. My visit last weekend was markedly better than the week prior etc.

This may hopefully improve the quality issues their parks have been facing while under Chapek's "penny pinching" ideology.

by rabuse 4y ago

This may hopefully improve the quality issues their parks have been facing while under Chapek's "penny pinching" ideology.

tim-- 4y ago

Bob Iger has had a lot of vanity projects over at Disney. The amount of debt that was put on after Disney acquired Fox (and not even all the parts they really wanted - Comcast got that!) is pretty high. A good overview can be found on this video essay: https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 Disney's long term debt for 2020 was $52.917B, a 38.78% increase from 2019. Disney's long term debt for 2019 was $38.129B, a 123.19% increase from 2018. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-te... Yes, Disney is slowly throwing money at the problem and reducing it's debt, but it's still a pretty high load. Still not as bad as Warner Bro's Discovery though. Warner Bros Discovery long term debt for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $48.612B, a 236.74% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-di...

rabuse 4y ago
Thanks for this.
divbzero 4y ago
The acquisition of Fox assets dwarfs Disney’s previous acquisitions of content: 2019 $71.3 B for 21st Century Fox 2012 $4.1 B for Lucasfilm 2009 $4.2 B for Marvel 2006 $6.3 B for Pixar As well as Disney’s other billion dollar acquisitions: 2016 $2.9 B for BAMTech 2001 $2.9 B for Fox Family 1999 $1.8 B for Infoseek 1996 $19.0 B for Capital Cities/ABC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney Bob Iger must have been eager to bulk up before the launch of Disney+?
- tim-- 4y ago
  Which is understandable. 21st Century Fox was a much larger company than any of the other three mentioned companies - with sales offices, distribution deals with other studios, physical movie studios, large television production units (especially that output content in the UK/AU). 21st Century Fox also owned the rights to hundreds of movies (Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dr. Seuss) and plenty of television (1/3 of Hulu, The Simpsons). They also had the movie rights to some of the Marvel characters. I don't know how much that was worth to Igor, but it seems that he really wants to get the family all back under one roof. It's interesting that you mention the ABC acquisition - in today's money that would cost $36.09 billion - just roughly half of the Fox acquisition.
mdasen 4y ago
In terms of annual revenue, Disney has $83B against $29B for Paramount Global, $30B for Netflix, and $13B for Warner Bros Discovery. So Disney's debt is 0.6x revenue while Warner Bros Discovery's debt is 3.7x revenue. If Disney's debt is a problem, WBD is drowning. What did Comcast get other than the 39% of Sky that Fox owned? The Fox Sports RSN went to Sinclair. I can appreciate the issues around debt, but Disney also acquired a huge amount of IP and market control in entertainment in the deal. They've left the Fox broadcast networks without a TV studio for their content (and first-run is becoming less important in the era of streaming). They've gotten so many of the most important IP franchises out there. They've become by far the largest movie studio. In an era where entertainment is becoming vertically integrated from creation to streaming, it seems like Disney has locked down so much of the future. We see how others are struggling. Paramount is trying to make the most of Star Trek and is the smallest major movie studio. Warner Bros Discovery is an also-ran with HBO Max - and having trouble figuring out the way forward with HBO Max/Discovery+/(the canceled) CNN+. WBD is also struggling with many of their franchises fizzling out: the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts universe is mired by JK Rowling's problematic politics and Ezra Miller's many issues; they seem to be having trouble getting their DC properties to perform how they'd like having canceled Batgirl when it was almost finished and talking about refocusing the franchise. Sony is an independent studio, but lacks the integrated platform that the other 4 have. Comcast/NBCUniversal is still trying to figure out what Peacock is and having trouble even attracting free users. Iger talked about making the call to buy the IP needed to really create a vertically integrated company that would be able to support a streaming service without licensing lots of outside content. It started with Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel who gave Disney a huge amount of content and talent. Fox was expensive, but also gave Disney the rest of the Marvel universe (except Spiderman) along with so much more content and a huge amount of control of the box office and TV. Disney is in a very strong position relative to their competitors. I think Disney is going to look pretty good in a decade. The economies of scale of running a large streaming service seem likely to help Disney a lot (having many more customers paying for the same content and allowing you to afford more of it). That's not to say Paramount, WBD, and others can't compete, but it does seem like Disney owns so much more which lets them offer more and secures their position. People got Netflix because it offered more and it's hard to see how Paramount or WBD or NBCUniversal could offer as much as Disney could. Now, Disney will try and figure out what the minimum it can offer while keeping users is, but they have such a depth of content that it puts them in the driver's seat a bit.
dibt 4y ago
Remember Toys-To-Life? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys-to-life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys-to-life I wonder if that was Bob Iger. Or maybe he was smart enough to dump it.

fasthands9 4y ago

I dont have the historic knowledge of the parks change but I have been often in the last years as a friend of mine has employee passes. I found them to be exceptionally clean with friendly staff. Leagues ahead of other parks. By far the worst part of the experience was that it was too crowded. Raising prices or limiting annual pass holders would help solve this but I feel like that falls into the penny pinching category. Lower attendance cap would also help but would be surprised if they did that given it is capping your income.

judge2020 4y ago
Starting to charge for parking at the resorts, continuously increasing food prices, still requiring park reservations, and the virtual queue[0] are some of the biggest downsides of the past few years attributed to Chapek. 0: which was instated to prevent 4+ hour wait times for Rise of the Resistance
- fasthands9 4y ago
  It just seems like these complains have a "Its too crowded no one goes there anymore" vibe. I feel like maybe the nickel and diming is not worth it - but fundamentally it seems like they need to lower the daily attendance and probably the easiest way to do that will keeping income stable is to raise ticket prices.
InTheArena 4y ago
Gee, if only someone had an unbelievably massive amount of land in Florida, and Long Beach, with which to open a new gate. I mean other than universal
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I do think this is the best option. Disneyland is cramped but it appears they will be given land to expand soon. I think they are worried a third US park would eat into the brand - but have always been a bit surprised they haven't tried to do one in Texas. There is a lot of land there that is cheap and geographically could serve different audience.

dawnerd 4y ago

I don’t think it will since a lot of these changes were started under Iger. Chapek became CEO at the worst possible time and had to deal with park shutdowns and staffing issues. Of course there were going to be service cutbacks. My visit last weekend was markedly better than the week prior etc.