I’ve heard rumors online that Disney is in big, big financial trouble.
Is it true?
Is it bad?
And, if bad, how bad?
Go woke, go broke.
That’s off topic.
I’ll bet if you look at their financial books, they’re just fine. But that doesn’t get headlines… or clicks.
I hadn’t heard any such rumors, though there are issues at the company. For example, ESPN was for decades a cash cow but is less so now that people are quitting cable and ESPN has future commitments for broadcast rights. I read someplace that Disney might try to sell part of ESPN to one of the major sports leagues (the NFL, NBA or MLB). I also heard the suggestion that Disney might also want to sell the ABC broadcast network.
But it’s the largest entertainment company, certainly in America if not the world. They still have a big movie and streaming business, theme parks and other businesses. My impression is that they’re masters at exploiting every property as much as possible.
Edited to add that last month, they announced a plan to spend $60 billion on the theme parks over the next decade. That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a dying company would do.
Not from what I’ve read.
I’m not seeing any news articles that seem to back the OP. They didn’t meet their numbers in the most recent quarter report and it looks like they need to improve their returns on their streaming business but that’s a far cry from “financial collapse”.
ETA: Walt Disney, on the other hand, “dying” would be a rabidly optimistic prognosis.
Hey, just make sure the freezer stays properly powered…
I’m curious, OP and terentii… where are you getting your news?
I read this last month:
Disney’s Downfall: The Rise and Fall of an Entertainment Giant
They acquired Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox. As the company shifted to streaming, it seemed set up to lap Netflix and eat the box office at the same time. But today, Disney’s stock is at a nine-year low. Operating margins are down 75 percent. Disney+ lost $4 billion last year.
Thanks. That was interesting. In particular, this bit, “We often think of Disney as having a flywheel of all different components: merchandise, theme parks, TV, motion pictures. That’s true, but close to two-thirds of Disney’s cash flow last decade was coming from its theme park division. That was because, as successful as the films were, they were primarily monetizing through those parks.”
It’s an old example, but I was amazed at how Disney exploited High School Musical. Originally, it was just a direct-to-television movie but it was really popular. There were three sequel films (just in the US, but more overseas), TV series (including High School Musical: The Musical: The Series), stage shows and I think the original cast even went on tour.
I disagree. Conservatives have declared their opposition to some big companies (including Disney) whose policies they oppose (these companies have sponsored advertising which recognizes the existence of gay and trans customers). Conservatives have called on their base to not support these companies.
So conservatives want people to believe that these companies are suffering financially due to this conservative opposition. So they’re publicizing stories to support this and I assume you may have heard one or more of these stories.
I don’t know whether these targeted companies are actually suffering a financial loss or whether conservatives are just making up false claims that these companies are suffering a financial loss.
Any entertainment company that went all-in on Streaming as their future are regretting their short-term thinking. I don’t know the ins and outs of any of it, but it seems they miscalculated something or other. Probably something to do with the myth of infinite growth.
They have their fingers in a lot of pies. Worst case they just shut down or sell the parts that are losing money.
The Economist just had an article on the billionaires - with two whole percent of the shares - pummeling the CEO. It notes that Disney has some real challenges in addition.
Many of the current board members were at Disney in 2019 when Mr Iger led the $71bn acquisition of 21st Century Fox, a film company, which saddled Disney with debt. They also blessed vast amounts of spending on content when the company launched Disney+, its loss-making streaming service. This year the board appears to have done little to help clarify Mr Iger’s thinking, either. He has three strategic quandaries to resolve. The first is to decide the future of Disney’s TV businesses, including ESPN, the sports channel, which were once the company’s cash cow but are now suffering from the slow demise of the cable bundle. Even the future of Star India, a former jewel with broadcast rights to cricket on the subcontinent, is under review. The second is to stem losses at Disney+, as well as agreeing with Comcast, a cable company, on a fair price for the rest of Hulu, another streaming service, that Disney part-owns with its competitor. The third is to reinvest in the parks business, including Disneyland, which Mr Peltz has accused Disney of milking to support its media business. So far this year, Mr Iger has blown hot and cold over the sale of TV assets and expressed reluctance about buying Hulu before changing his mind. As for parks, he recently announced a $60bn investment—but that is over ten years, and much of it may be earmarked to be spent after the end of his expected tenure.
But the article also notes that Disney has been through this before, with a very similar crisis twenty years ago. Obviously it got through that just fine. Disney has giant piles of money, owns the biggest names in franchise entertainment, and has the best brand in the universe to lure people to its multiple properties, virtual and physical. When your problems are which components to sell for tens of billions of dollars, you don’t have a real problem.
What it really needs is a young executive in touch with today’s trends. I’m still voting for Biden, but Disney could stand to move down a generation.
They’ve acquired a huge catalog of content from their purchases. Other streamers can spend multi-millions of dollars to produce what they hope is the next zombie superhero socially relevant miniseries, and Disney will patiently await the 2024 release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and drop the 14 episodes of the 1974 TV series onto Disney+ and get millions of eyeballs for peanuts
Heh, it all does have a look of an attempt to “talk down” Disney. Sure, we live in an age where merely just staying steady is somehow looked down upon and everything is supposed to grow, grow, grow at double-digit rate all the time, and Disney starts from such a position that a modest percentage adjustment to prune weak branches adds up to stupefying numbers in dollars and is waved around as proof of doom. But yeah it would help to get dynamic fresh leadership… thing is, when you are so valuable you ALSO want to trust the leaders to not mess things up.
Yep, mostly bigots, learning from DeSantic, how Disney- just about the most child safe place - is “grooming” kids. “Go woke, go broke” is another popular bigot refrain.
All true. Disney’s core business is selling entertainment to children. It’s not like that’s going to disappear. And they’ve got about a hundred years of intellectual property in the proverbial vault, so it’s not like any other company is going to catch up in the next few decades.