Forget streaming; it's time for the "Theme Park Wars"

Entertainment companies are gearing up to compete for our vacation savings. Here's one idea about what they'll do first...

Live experiences are the new battleground for entertainment companies. Forget the “Streaming Wars.” That was SO September 2022. 

Ben Thompson recently said Disney is entering its “Taylor Swift era” on Stratechery.

Taylor herself is getting headlines for merely ATTENDING the most-watched events of the fall (NFL Football), freshly off of making a ZILLION dollars from the biggest tour ever.

Disney announced that it’s spending $60 BILLION to upgrade its theme parks (albeit after shutting down the immersive Star Wars hotel in Florida #RIP).

My social feed is FULL of people talking about the “Vegas Sphere” — both the U2 concert from last weekend and how much it costs to take over the sphere for their brand ($450k/day). “This is the new Times Square."

Universal Studios has massively upgraded their global parks in the last decade, with Harry Potter and Super Mario Bros lands.

The battle for our vacation (thousands of) dollars, rather than our monthly TV (dozens of) dollars, has begun.

THE SMART

Walt Disney famously sketched out his “intellectual property flywheel” in 1957. Disney was (and still is) engineered to make money ten different ways, leveraging the amazing characters and stories they create.

From music rights to cruises to books to merchandise and licensing, few competitors can match them.

But its theme parks, pandemic excepted, deliver the biggest profits — and the best fan experiences.

So it’s surprising to me that Warner Bros, Universal, and Netflix aren’t scheming to expand their own flywheels.

A shortcut could be buying their way in. What if Warner Bros (with a new vision for DC) acquired a national chain of parks? Or Netflix, looking to cement customer loyalty?

As of today: 

• Six Flags’ market cap is $1.8B

• Cedar Fair is $1.9B

• Dave and Busters is $1.6B

Any big entertainment or tech company could scoop these easily. I suspect they’re already sniffing around (I have no intel).

Even crazier - what if DISNEY bought one of these companies, to turn them into “Disneyland Lite” — a more intimate setting that would allow more people to experience the Disney magic, for “hundreds” of dollars and a car ride, vs. “thousands” of dollars and a flight to LA or Orlando (or Tokyo if you’re fancy).

Fun fact: I said this to a big room of AT&T/WarnerMedia executives in 2018. “We should buy Six Flags.” But did they listen to me?

Narrator: They didn’t.

THE ART

What could any one of those companies do with a national chain of theme parks?

The IP opportunities are endless. Here are a few to get us started on a group brainstorm:

Net-flix Flags

• Restaurants renamed House of Carbs, where they serve:

• The Chicken Sand-Witcher

• Comes with fries or Stranger Rings

• Follow Schitt’s Creek signs to the bathrooms

• Hot sidewalks are Floor is Lava

• Park security all renamed Narcos

Disneytowns

- Superman rollercoaster rebranded Buzz Lightyear (“Falling, with style!”)

Okay, I’ve REALLY thought about Netflix doing this, and less so the others, but let’s keep it going in the comments:

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Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day (and are planning a fun trip to Disneyland sometime soon).