Disney Bobby
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
Yeah, you can only watch old movies so many times, and the new stuff doesn't justify the monthly price.
DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY
- Thread starter hhisc16
- Start date
Yeah, you can only watch old movies so many times, and the new stuff doesn't justify the monthly price.
clarker99
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 15, 2019
If Disney stripped all its linear assets and cancelled DIS+ how low would the stock price go?
For the sake of the stock price, we have to see if they can turn D+ around at this point.
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In terms of licensing, what if Netflix won't license Disney owned content or meet their price points? Netflix are now turning a profit without Disney owned properties on their platform. If linear is dead and and every other streamer is DOA how will licensing work? It is a very intriguing space.
Agreed on the first part and great questions on the second part. I had not thought of the possibility of Netflix having near monopoly power if Disney gets out of the streaming game. At that point it would be Netflix and a bunch of also rans, with consistent losses.
Although there's still the 800 lb tech giants, I could see Amazon, Google, and especially Apple paying up for Disney content. At one point early on with Disney dipping their toe in streaming, I was really expecting a streaming partnership of some kind with Apple. That would have lead to a much healthier stock price.
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BrianL
Doom Buggy Driver
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2013
Well, I can watch old movies plenty - in fact I care more about those than any of the newer stuff.
Streamers need to realize that a barrage of new content does not equal new subscribers. Netflix is profitable because it has a huge backlog of licensed content that people want to rewatch over and over again.
Some of the top streamed shows of 2022 are NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Criminal Minds, etc. Disney Plus does not have any shows that cater to grownups and instead all those shows are on Hulu.
In 2022, Disney had 2 of the top 15 streaming shows (non originals), by minutes viewed, according to Nielsen data and Netflix had 10. If we're talking about purely original shows, Netflix had 13 of the top 15 and Disney 0. This gets totally flipped for movies where Disney Plus had 10 of the top 15 streamed movies in 2022 and Netflix 5.
Disney should massively slow down on making content for Plus. Instead license kids shows and let its theatrical slate of movies be the influx of new content every month or so. Disney Plus's top streamed show is Bluey and second is Simpsons. The top streamed movie was Encanto.
2022 streaming stats
Some of the top streamed shows of 2022 are NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Criminal Minds, etc. Disney Plus does not have any shows that cater to grownups and instead all those shows are on Hulu.
In 2022, Disney had 2 of the top 15 streaming shows (non originals), by minutes viewed, according to Nielsen data and Netflix had 10. If we're talking about purely original shows, Netflix had 13 of the top 15 and Disney 0. This gets totally flipped for movies where Disney Plus had 10 of the top 15 streamed movies in 2022 and Netflix 5.
Disney should massively slow down on making content for Plus. Instead license kids shows and let its theatrical slate of movies be the influx of new content every month or so. Disney Plus's top streamed show is Bluey and second is Simpsons. The top streamed movie was Encanto.
2022 streaming stats
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
This business of deleting content from streaming libraries seem like cheating to me. The initial appeal of streaming was that you could watch what YOU want to watch on YOUR timetable. If streamers are deleting content, why bother with it - just go back to collecting DVDs.
It started when DIS + pulled Avatar off just prior to the release of Avatar 2. That wasn't the right thing to do.
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
https://variety.com/vip/q1-2023-streaming-earnings-season-crunch-time-1235619446/
May 22, 2023 7:00am PT
Brutal Q1 Earnings Season Marks Crunch Time for Streamers
The streaming wars have officially entered their do-or-die phase.
With the traditional studios all promising Wall Street their direct-to-consumer operations will turn a profit by 2024, pressure is only increasing on these companies to deliver improved results at their streaming segments.
Unfortunately, the most vulnerable players don’t seem able to get a handle on their expenses. Streaming losses at Paramount and NBCUniversal were up year-over-year in Q1, causing Paramount Global stock to plunge nearly 30% following its earnings report. (NBCU parent Comcast, meanwhile, actually saw its stock swing upward thanks to higher profits from its broadband business.)
It remains doubtful whether Paramount+ and Peacock can achieve the scale needed to sustain a service, begging the question, as VIP+ has pondered before, of whether they should be in the costly streaming game at all.
Of course, Paramount and NBCU are hardly the only companies struggling with streaming growth. Subscriber additions for the major U.S.-based SVODs have drastically slowed as pandemic-era expansion subsided for good, with aggregate net adds expected to turn negative for the first time in Q1, counting Lionsgate’s Starz service.
This dramatic slowdown was largely driven by lower net gains or losses internationally, such as Disney’s subscriber dropoff in India and Starz’s recent exit from several major European markets.
Even not counting Starz, net sub adds dropped more than 80% YoY in Q1. Growth will likely rebound in the second half of the year as usual, but this strongly suggests that streaming will not be returning to a high-growth phase anytime soon, if ever. Indeed, Wall Street forecasts sub growth to fall below 2022 levels this year.
The only option left to streamers, then, may be the sort of highly aggressive cost-cutting Warner Bros. Discovery engaged in last year. The strategy is beginning to pay off for David Zaslav & Co.: WBD’s DTC segment scraped its first profitable quarter in Q1, helping paper over an overall loss for the quarter, with WBD stock rising slightly after its earnings report.
Disney had no such luck. Despite CEO Bob Iger’s push to slash expenses since his grand return — which reduced the company’s Q1 streaming loss about 25% versus the year prior — Disney shares plunged in the wake of its own earnings call, partly due to record subscriber losses for Disney+ (down 4 million quarter-on-quarter).
Of course, that loss was certainly foreseeable after Disney let its streaming rights for Indian Premier League cricket lapse, and it’s highly debatable whether the Mouse House’s long-term streaming prospects are really in trouble at this juncture.
It’s arguable that investors have brought down the hammer too hard after letting irrational exuberance around streaming get the better of them, but that’s likely small comfort to the companies feeling the pain of that hammer at the moment.
May 22, 2023 7:00am PT
Brutal Q1 Earnings Season Marks Crunch Time for Streamers
The streaming wars have officially entered their do-or-die phase.
With the traditional studios all promising Wall Street their direct-to-consumer operations will turn a profit by 2024, pressure is only increasing on these companies to deliver improved results at their streaming segments.
Unfortunately, the most vulnerable players don’t seem able to get a handle on their expenses. Streaming losses at Paramount and NBCUniversal were up year-over-year in Q1, causing Paramount Global stock to plunge nearly 30% following its earnings report. (NBCU parent Comcast, meanwhile, actually saw its stock swing upward thanks to higher profits from its broadband business.)
It remains doubtful whether Paramount+ and Peacock can achieve the scale needed to sustain a service, begging the question, as VIP+ has pondered before, of whether they should be in the costly streaming game at all.
Of course, Paramount and NBCU are hardly the only companies struggling with streaming growth. Subscriber additions for the major U.S.-based SVODs have drastically slowed as pandemic-era expansion subsided for good, with aggregate net adds expected to turn negative for the first time in Q1, counting Lionsgate’s Starz service.
This dramatic slowdown was largely driven by lower net gains or losses internationally, such as Disney’s subscriber dropoff in India and Starz’s recent exit from several major European markets.
Even not counting Starz, net sub adds dropped more than 80% YoY in Q1. Growth will likely rebound in the second half of the year as usual, but this strongly suggests that streaming will not be returning to a high-growth phase anytime soon, if ever. Indeed, Wall Street forecasts sub growth to fall below 2022 levels this year.
The only option left to streamers, then, may be the sort of highly aggressive cost-cutting Warner Bros. Discovery engaged in last year. The strategy is beginning to pay off for David Zaslav & Co.: WBD’s DTC segment scraped its first profitable quarter in Q1, helping paper over an overall loss for the quarter, with WBD stock rising slightly after its earnings report.
Disney had no such luck. Despite CEO Bob Iger’s push to slash expenses since his grand return — which reduced the company’s Q1 streaming loss about 25% versus the year prior — Disney shares plunged in the wake of its own earnings call, partly due to record subscriber losses for Disney+ (down 4 million quarter-on-quarter).
Of course, that loss was certainly foreseeable after Disney let its streaming rights for Indian Premier League cricket lapse, and it’s highly debatable whether the Mouse House’s long-term streaming prospects are really in trouble at this juncture.
It’s arguable that investors have brought down the hammer too hard after letting irrational exuberance around streaming get the better of them, but that’s likely small comfort to the companies feeling the pain of that hammer at the moment.
BrianL
Doom Buggy Driver
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2013
Exactly. I thought Disney+ was going to be a complete repository of all things Disney. If all they had was that, I wouldn't even care if they made "originals" (though I would expect new movies to find their way to it eventually). The fact that they are still missing several catalog titles is frustrating.
Also, they didn't remove Avatar becuase ot the sequel but because of the re-release to theaters and minor changes were made. It's a small distinction though.
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
Yes, they re-released the original Avatar to movies prior to A2 premiering. I had forgotten that.
But I always thought D+ would be successful on some level because kids love to watch stuff over and over and over again. Just throw the entire catalog out there and what family would not subscribe - for the price of 3 or 4 DVD's, you get a year's worth of everything. It should be an easy sell.
This exactly. It will be interesting to see how D+ plays out, the initial pricing was so attractive that it was a real value. I think they really burned a lot of otherwise good money on sub-standard content. I am / was a huge Star Wars fan and was completely pumped up about Obi-Wan, but the first episode's production value looked so cheap I couldn't even get through it.
I will continue to pay for D+ because I have a 5-year-old girl who loves it for the movies and Bluey, but none of the original stuff.
HokieRaven5
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2020
Yeah selling off all of the linear assets and D+ would send the stock into a tailspin on WS and Alphabet or Amazon would probably get into a bidding war to acquire $Dis. Alphabet is sitting with about $100B in cash on hand at the moment. Being able to add more Disney content to YouTube TV would certainly be a boost for them.
As it stands the stock price is just going to float along at the whims of D+, will get a slight bump once the date of implementation of the dividend is officially given, and then whenever the successor to Iger is more clear will move as a response to that.
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It's looking like D+ will be forced into something closer to what you've outlined with the cost cutting and now the writer's strike.
From a shareholder standpoint, I really like the idea of filling it with owned library content, at almost no cost; push movies to D+ after theaters or after pay/network runs if that will drive more revenue, again very little incremental cost; and maybe do one high quality event series a year from Marvel and SW. Those should bring in a bunch of short term subscribers, some of whom will end up keeping the subscription long term.
There, we fixed D+ for them. Now Disney, would you like us to find your next CEO? LOL
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/inside-disney-billion-dollar-star-130000106.html
Inside Disney’s Billion-Dollar ‘Star Wars’ Galactic Starcruiser Hotel Bust | Exclusive
Drew Taylor
Wed, May 24, 2023 at 8:00 AM CDT
Just as fast as it materialized, Disney’s “Star Wars”-themed hotel, the Galactic Starcruiser, went belly up in one of the company’s biggest busts in recent memory, the nearly $1 billion resort unceremoniously shut by the entertainment giant less than a week ago.
The relatively straightforward idea for an ultra-themed hotel wound up — thanks to a combination of hubris, mismanagement and greed — as perhaps the greatest Disney theme park disaster ever.
The 100-room resort, which one ex-Imagineer estimated cost the company more than $1 billion, was supposed to be the next big thing for Disney’s theme parks, an interactive and wholly immersive experience, built around a traditional hotel but including elements of live-action role-playing, improvisational theater and more common theme-park mechanics.
Drawing on the mythology of the beloved series of “Star Wars” films and television shows and sited within the sprawling Walt Disney World complex outside of Orlando, Florida, the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser was a concept meant to travel the world. There were tentative plans to build one in Paris and another at the as-yet-unannounced third gate at Tokyo. It could even have come home to Disneyland in Anaheim.
The Starcruiser was purposefully designed to push the boundaries of what a Disney vacation could be, thanks to its cutting-edge technology, emphasis on play and truly eye-watering price point, costing about $1,600 per person for a two-night “voyage.” It opened last spring to a flood of hype and rave reviews: The Los Angeles Times said it could “revolutionize how we vacation.” But late last week, the company announced that
it would be shuttering the bespoke experience for good.
It was so abrupt that the cast members who worked at the operation didn’t know about the closure until the news broke, which was purposefully sandwiched between Disney’s declaration that it was pulling out of a costly relocation of thousands of jobs to Florida and the first reviews of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” out of Cannes.
What Disney will do with the building or any elements from the experience remains a mystery. But as to the question of what brought the starship hotel to a screeching halt, insiders have given TheWrap some answers.
But first, let’s start at the beginning…
Starcruiser origins
The idea for a highly themed Disney hotel experience dates to at least the early 1990s when Walt Disney Imagineers plotted a haunted hotel that you could actually stay in. Ghosts would have appeared in your mirrors, spooky sounds would echo down the hallway.
While the haunted hotel idea went away, the concept of immersing guests in a one-of-a-kind experience remained. After all, it’s not that far removed from the already highly themed hotels that Walt Disney World is known for — places that whisk you away to an oceanic paradise or turn-of-the-century stateliness.
Disney wasn’t the only company exploring such concepts. According to theme park historian Jim Hill, Warner Bros. had looked at acquiring a parcel of land in the English countryside for what he describes as “the ultimate ‘Harry Potter’-themed experience.”
“You boarded the Hogwarts Express, crossed the Black Lake and when you got there were sorted into houses,” Hill said. There was even going to be an animatronic version of Fluffy, the three-headed dog. While there isn’t a “Harry Potter” reader or watcher who hasn’t wondered what it’d be like to actually attend Hogwarts, Warner Bros. couldn’t be convinced that the rewards outweighed the risks. The project was canceled.
But Disney didn’t give up. In 2017, the company quietly started asking guests if they would be interested in a “Star Wars” hotel experience. Details from these original polls are eerily similar to what was eventually made, and the polls shared concept art that was quickly leaked. That indicated plans had been in the works for a while and the polls were the last push the company needed to finally turn the key.
The two-night “voyage,” the exclusive access to the then-unnamed “Star Wars”-themed land and the idea of a robot “butler” (later reduced to a kind of in-room virtual assistant) were all there, along with things that didn’t make the Galactic Starcruiser’s final cut. In one early version of the Starcruiser, some of the rooms would have actually looked out onto the pool. The final version of the hotel doesn’t have a single window.
Later in 2017, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, Disney officially unveiled the concept, which was being overseen by Scott Trowbridge, a Walt Disney Imagineer in charge of the “Star Wars” portfolio. Disney had poached Trowbridge after he contributed to Universal’s Harry Potter project.
Disney said it would be an adventure that lasts “every minute” you’re on board the starship (then unnamed, it would later be christened the Halcyon). At the D23 Expo in 2019, more details emerged: lightsaber training, a packed lobby (complete with Chewbacca) and an exclusive “port day” at Batuu, the planet that houses Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the “Star Wars”-themed land.
Bob Chapek, then chairman of Disney parks, experiences and products, announced at D23 that guests would “board and depart together.” Concrete details, however, were hard to come by, and some of the concept art was hard to gauge.
Soon, it became clear that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser (as it was now known) would be a dumping ground for concepts and ideas developed for Galaxy’s Edge, the expansive “Star Wars” land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, but cut at the last minute by Chapek in a dramatic, last-minute streamlining of the land.
These scrapped Galaxy’s Edge ideas included an intergalactic dinner show (in the land it was meant to be built behind Oga’s Cantina) and a number of stunt shows (next time you’re in Galaxy’s Edge, look up at all the loadbearing catwalks and rafters — these would have supported several different shows throughout the land).
Even the element of having a “reputation” that would follow you around the land was ported over to the Galactic Starcruiser, as cast members and characters you interact with would know what quest you were on (and whether you were a First Order or Resistance sympathizer). The Starcruiser eventually launched with 11 different storylines and three different narrative paths. In one, you have to orchestrate a jewel heist. In another, you help two characters fall in love.
While the opening of the hotel was pushed back due to the global pandemic, when Disney finally did start the promotional push, the campaign was rockier than a hurdling asteroid. By that time, Chapek had become CEO.
On Nov. 28, 2021, Disney shared a behind-the-scenes look at the Starcruiser on YouTube. By then the exorbitant prices had been revealed and those who saw the video voiced their complaints. The video showed singer Gaya, a major character onboard the Halcyon, but she wasn’t in the dining room where she actually sings. They put her in the much-smaller cantina. The response was so overwhelmingly negative that Disney did the unthinkable and removed the video.
As part of the marketing push, Lucasfilm and Disney began awkwardly inserting the Starcruiser into preexisting “Star Wars” mythology, suggesting that Anakin and Padme took their honeymoon on the Halcyon (in a comic book called “Star Wars: Halycon Legacy”), implying that this was where Luke and Leia were conceived. (The Galactic Starcruiser, like Galaxy’s Edge, is wedged into a specific point in the “Star Wars” timeline, in between “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”)
Disney constantly struggled with describing what the experience actually was, a problem that plagued the project from the very beginning, making the message of why you should spend thousands of dollars on said experience even more difficult.
At the time of the Galactic Starcruiser’s development, Chapek was becoming increasingly obsessed with wooing the uber-wealthy and making sure that everything at a Disney theme park came with an accompanying surcharge. When the parks reopened after COVID, gone was the free FastPass system, replaced by a cumbersome app called Genie+ and an a la carte ride-skipping option called Lightning Lane.
The Starcruiser falls apart
Initially, the Galactic Starcruiser was off to a strong start, despite the iffy lead-up. The media blitz that accompanied the experience’s opening last spring led to strong word of mouth (the Los Angeles Times said that it was “arguably the most ambitious tourism project undertaken by the Walt Disney Company since the creation of the original Disneyland”). All 100 rooms were regularly booked.
Prior to the Galactic Starcruiser’s opening, this reporter attended a day-long, truncated version of the experience and was genuinely dazzled by the dinner show, the interaction with characters, the big, climactic lightsaber duel. It was breathlessly paced and super-immersive.
But a year after the Starcruiser had opened, demand for the “Star Wars” hotel had all but dried up. Heavy discounts were being offered to cast members and those who were part of the Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s members-only timeshare product. The number of “voyages” was reduced, with some canceled outright. The dinner show went from twice a night to one sitting (and that was, according to someone who visited the Starcruiser in March, sparsely attended).
“Once you went through the one-percenters who could afford it and the fanatical ‘Star Wars’ fans who would sell their mother to do it, you were done,” a Disney insider told TheWrap.
“Disney treated it as the rest of the theme parks, encouraging people to take photos, videos, vlogs — for the people who went, they would have to shield themselves from the media output. You’re paying a lot of money for something you can view virtually,” said Kevin Perjurer, the man behind the popular YouTube channel Defunctland and the world’s leading Disney documentarian. “There’s no mystery.”
In some ways, Perjurer said, “You could experience more virtually than you could in person.”
One YouTuber who paid for the experience, Jenny Nicholson, had a truly miserable time and hilariously documented her experience for her 1 million subscribers, including how she was stuck behind a pole for the dinner show. “I can’t even be like ‘Good thing I saw it before they got rid of it.’ I didn’t see anything!!!” she tweeted after the news of the hotel’s closure broke.
Behind the scenes, Disney toiled to find a workable solution. Could they offer “tours” of the facilities, with access to the bar, the dinner show and the gift shop, for those already staying at Walt Disney World? The charge could be $50 or $100 per person. Another option recently emerged according to Hill: retheme the entire hotel to the popular Disney+ “Star Wars” streaming series “The Mandalorian.” Reports have since emerged that Imagineers were at the Starcruiser as recently as last week, looking at ways they could retrofit or change the experience.
Ultimately, it was Bob Iger who decided to shut these plans down. It was one more problem the two-time Disney CEO inherited from Chapek, his hand-picked successor, whom he replaced in November.
Even on a practical level, these alternate ideas simply wouldn’t work. The Starcruiser is housed in a blank gray building south of Disney’s Hollywood Studios in a cast-members-only area. The building itself looks more like a Stalinist record depot than a spot of whimsical merriment. And it’s not exactly walkable.
The closing date for the Starcruiser is late September, days before the close of fiscal 2023. Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro said during the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications Conference Monday that the company expected to take a $150 million write-down per quarter until then, suggesting that by October the crash of the Starcruiser could add up to a $300 million writedown, easily putting the project as one of the costliest Disney Parks blunders ever.
What now?
Searching for a comparable Disney disaster, you could look to the troubled openings of the Euro Disney project (later renamed Disneyland Paris) and Disney California Adventure. But both were eventually profitable, and neither one was completely shuttered. There was the Disney Institute, which offered informative and educational classes (categories included “animation,” “culinary” and “the great outdoors”). It wasn’t a success, but it limped along for a little while. When it closed, the space was reused for an actual hotel.
Another bust was DisneyQuest, a plan for standalone Disney-themed arcades that started in Florida and were meant to spread nationwide (only a single other location, in Chicago, ever opened). And while that concept never caught on, the original arcade lasted in Walt Disney World for nearly 20 years.
Perjurer points to the NBA Experience, the replacement for DisneyQuest in Walt Disney World, as the closest thing, historically, to the Galactic Starcruiser.
The NBA Experience was located in the former DisneyQuest space, part of Disney Springs, the heavily themed retail and dining area of Walt Disney World. It opened in August 2019. Then it closed during the pandemic and just never reopened.
“The NBA Experience represented Iger’s tenure in a similar way that the Starcruiser represented Chapek’s,” Perjurer said. “Iger was an NBA fan and there were rumors he was going to buy a team. The NBA Experience didn’t hit in the same way.”
The entire Galactic Starcruiser experience, to Perjurer, misunderstood what makes Disney so special, starting with its limited capacity. In his rough calculation, the same number of people who stayed in the Galactic Starcruiser in a year could visit the Magic Kingdom in just one day.
Perjurer conceded that some elements of the Starcruiser could escape back to Galaxy’s Edge, like the stunt show and a few of the walk-around characters. But he wondered if any of these elements would resonate with regular guests, outside of the hermetically sealed world of the Halcyon. What is Gaya without her dinner show?
“No one connected to this came off well,” said one Disney insider. That’s an understatement of galactic proportions.
Inside Disney’s Billion-Dollar ‘Star Wars’ Galactic Starcruiser Hotel Bust | Exclusive
Drew Taylor
Wed, May 24, 2023 at 8:00 AM CDT
Just as fast as it materialized, Disney’s “Star Wars”-themed hotel, the Galactic Starcruiser, went belly up in one of the company’s biggest busts in recent memory, the nearly $1 billion resort unceremoniously shut by the entertainment giant less than a week ago.
The relatively straightforward idea for an ultra-themed hotel wound up — thanks to a combination of hubris, mismanagement and greed — as perhaps the greatest Disney theme park disaster ever.
The 100-room resort, which one ex-Imagineer estimated cost the company more than $1 billion, was supposed to be the next big thing for Disney’s theme parks, an interactive and wholly immersive experience, built around a traditional hotel but including elements of live-action role-playing, improvisational theater and more common theme-park mechanics.
Drawing on the mythology of the beloved series of “Star Wars” films and television shows and sited within the sprawling Walt Disney World complex outside of Orlando, Florida, the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser was a concept meant to travel the world. There were tentative plans to build one in Paris and another at the as-yet-unannounced third gate at Tokyo. It could even have come home to Disneyland in Anaheim.
The Starcruiser was purposefully designed to push the boundaries of what a Disney vacation could be, thanks to its cutting-edge technology, emphasis on play and truly eye-watering price point, costing about $1,600 per person for a two-night “voyage.” It opened last spring to a flood of hype and rave reviews: The Los Angeles Times said it could “revolutionize how we vacation.” But late last week, the company announced that
it would be shuttering the bespoke experience for good.
It was so abrupt that the cast members who worked at the operation didn’t know about the closure until the news broke, which was purposefully sandwiched between Disney’s declaration that it was pulling out of a costly relocation of thousands of jobs to Florida and the first reviews of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” out of Cannes.
What Disney will do with the building or any elements from the experience remains a mystery. But as to the question of what brought the starship hotel to a screeching halt, insiders have given TheWrap some answers.
But first, let’s start at the beginning…
Starcruiser origins
The idea for a highly themed Disney hotel experience dates to at least the early 1990s when Walt Disney Imagineers plotted a haunted hotel that you could actually stay in. Ghosts would have appeared in your mirrors, spooky sounds would echo down the hallway.
While the haunted hotel idea went away, the concept of immersing guests in a one-of-a-kind experience remained. After all, it’s not that far removed from the already highly themed hotels that Walt Disney World is known for — places that whisk you away to an oceanic paradise or turn-of-the-century stateliness.
Disney wasn’t the only company exploring such concepts. According to theme park historian Jim Hill, Warner Bros. had looked at acquiring a parcel of land in the English countryside for what he describes as “the ultimate ‘Harry Potter’-themed experience.”
“You boarded the Hogwarts Express, crossed the Black Lake and when you got there were sorted into houses,” Hill said. There was even going to be an animatronic version of Fluffy, the three-headed dog. While there isn’t a “Harry Potter” reader or watcher who hasn’t wondered what it’d be like to actually attend Hogwarts, Warner Bros. couldn’t be convinced that the rewards outweighed the risks. The project was canceled.
But Disney didn’t give up. In 2017, the company quietly started asking guests if they would be interested in a “Star Wars” hotel experience. Details from these original polls are eerily similar to what was eventually made, and the polls shared concept art that was quickly leaked. That indicated plans had been in the works for a while and the polls were the last push the company needed to finally turn the key.
The two-night “voyage,” the exclusive access to the then-unnamed “Star Wars”-themed land and the idea of a robot “butler” (later reduced to a kind of in-room virtual assistant) were all there, along with things that didn’t make the Galactic Starcruiser’s final cut. In one early version of the Starcruiser, some of the rooms would have actually looked out onto the pool. The final version of the hotel doesn’t have a single window.
Later in 2017, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, Disney officially unveiled the concept, which was being overseen by Scott Trowbridge, a Walt Disney Imagineer in charge of the “Star Wars” portfolio. Disney had poached Trowbridge after he contributed to Universal’s Harry Potter project.
Disney said it would be an adventure that lasts “every minute” you’re on board the starship (then unnamed, it would later be christened the Halcyon). At the D23 Expo in 2019, more details emerged: lightsaber training, a packed lobby (complete with Chewbacca) and an exclusive “port day” at Batuu, the planet that houses Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the “Star Wars”-themed land.
Bob Chapek, then chairman of Disney parks, experiences and products, announced at D23 that guests would “board and depart together.” Concrete details, however, were hard to come by, and some of the concept art was hard to gauge.
Soon, it became clear that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser (as it was now known) would be a dumping ground for concepts and ideas developed for Galaxy’s Edge, the expansive “Star Wars” land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, but cut at the last minute by Chapek in a dramatic, last-minute streamlining of the land.
These scrapped Galaxy’s Edge ideas included an intergalactic dinner show (in the land it was meant to be built behind Oga’s Cantina) and a number of stunt shows (next time you’re in Galaxy’s Edge, look up at all the loadbearing catwalks and rafters — these would have supported several different shows throughout the land).
Even the element of having a “reputation” that would follow you around the land was ported over to the Galactic Starcruiser, as cast members and characters you interact with would know what quest you were on (and whether you were a First Order or Resistance sympathizer). The Starcruiser eventually launched with 11 different storylines and three different narrative paths. In one, you have to orchestrate a jewel heist. In another, you help two characters fall in love.
While the opening of the hotel was pushed back due to the global pandemic, when Disney finally did start the promotional push, the campaign was rockier than a hurdling asteroid. By that time, Chapek had become CEO.
On Nov. 28, 2021, Disney shared a behind-the-scenes look at the Starcruiser on YouTube. By then the exorbitant prices had been revealed and those who saw the video voiced their complaints. The video showed singer Gaya, a major character onboard the Halcyon, but she wasn’t in the dining room where she actually sings. They put her in the much-smaller cantina. The response was so overwhelmingly negative that Disney did the unthinkable and removed the video.
As part of the marketing push, Lucasfilm and Disney began awkwardly inserting the Starcruiser into preexisting “Star Wars” mythology, suggesting that Anakin and Padme took their honeymoon on the Halcyon (in a comic book called “Star Wars: Halycon Legacy”), implying that this was where Luke and Leia were conceived. (The Galactic Starcruiser, like Galaxy’s Edge, is wedged into a specific point in the “Star Wars” timeline, in between “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”)
Disney constantly struggled with describing what the experience actually was, a problem that plagued the project from the very beginning, making the message of why you should spend thousands of dollars on said experience even more difficult.
At the time of the Galactic Starcruiser’s development, Chapek was becoming increasingly obsessed with wooing the uber-wealthy and making sure that everything at a Disney theme park came with an accompanying surcharge. When the parks reopened after COVID, gone was the free FastPass system, replaced by a cumbersome app called Genie+ and an a la carte ride-skipping option called Lightning Lane.
The Starcruiser falls apart
Initially, the Galactic Starcruiser was off to a strong start, despite the iffy lead-up. The media blitz that accompanied the experience’s opening last spring led to strong word of mouth (the Los Angeles Times said that it was “arguably the most ambitious tourism project undertaken by the Walt Disney Company since the creation of the original Disneyland”). All 100 rooms were regularly booked.
Prior to the Galactic Starcruiser’s opening, this reporter attended a day-long, truncated version of the experience and was genuinely dazzled by the dinner show, the interaction with characters, the big, climactic lightsaber duel. It was breathlessly paced and super-immersive.
But a year after the Starcruiser had opened, demand for the “Star Wars” hotel had all but dried up. Heavy discounts were being offered to cast members and those who were part of the Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s members-only timeshare product. The number of “voyages” was reduced, with some canceled outright. The dinner show went from twice a night to one sitting (and that was, according to someone who visited the Starcruiser in March, sparsely attended).
“Once you went through the one-percenters who could afford it and the fanatical ‘Star Wars’ fans who would sell their mother to do it, you were done,” a Disney insider told TheWrap.
“Disney treated it as the rest of the theme parks, encouraging people to take photos, videos, vlogs — for the people who went, they would have to shield themselves from the media output. You’re paying a lot of money for something you can view virtually,” said Kevin Perjurer, the man behind the popular YouTube channel Defunctland and the world’s leading Disney documentarian. “There’s no mystery.”
In some ways, Perjurer said, “You could experience more virtually than you could in person.”
One YouTuber who paid for the experience, Jenny Nicholson, had a truly miserable time and hilariously documented her experience for her 1 million subscribers, including how she was stuck behind a pole for the dinner show. “I can’t even be like ‘Good thing I saw it before they got rid of it.’ I didn’t see anything!!!” she tweeted after the news of the hotel’s closure broke.
Behind the scenes, Disney toiled to find a workable solution. Could they offer “tours” of the facilities, with access to the bar, the dinner show and the gift shop, for those already staying at Walt Disney World? The charge could be $50 or $100 per person. Another option recently emerged according to Hill: retheme the entire hotel to the popular Disney+ “Star Wars” streaming series “The Mandalorian.” Reports have since emerged that Imagineers were at the Starcruiser as recently as last week, looking at ways they could retrofit or change the experience.
Ultimately, it was Bob Iger who decided to shut these plans down. It was one more problem the two-time Disney CEO inherited from Chapek, his hand-picked successor, whom he replaced in November.
Even on a practical level, these alternate ideas simply wouldn’t work. The Starcruiser is housed in a blank gray building south of Disney’s Hollywood Studios in a cast-members-only area. The building itself looks more like a Stalinist record depot than a spot of whimsical merriment. And it’s not exactly walkable.
The closing date for the Starcruiser is late September, days before the close of fiscal 2023. Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro said during the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications Conference Monday that the company expected to take a $150 million write-down per quarter until then, suggesting that by October the crash of the Starcruiser could add up to a $300 million writedown, easily putting the project as one of the costliest Disney Parks blunders ever.
What now?
Searching for a comparable Disney disaster, you could look to the troubled openings of the Euro Disney project (later renamed Disneyland Paris) and Disney California Adventure. But both were eventually profitable, and neither one was completely shuttered. There was the Disney Institute, which offered informative and educational classes (categories included “animation,” “culinary” and “the great outdoors”). It wasn’t a success, but it limped along for a little while. When it closed, the space was reused for an actual hotel.
Another bust was DisneyQuest, a plan for standalone Disney-themed arcades that started in Florida and were meant to spread nationwide (only a single other location, in Chicago, ever opened). And while that concept never caught on, the original arcade lasted in Walt Disney World for nearly 20 years.
Perjurer points to the NBA Experience, the replacement for DisneyQuest in Walt Disney World, as the closest thing, historically, to the Galactic Starcruiser.
The NBA Experience was located in the former DisneyQuest space, part of Disney Springs, the heavily themed retail and dining area of Walt Disney World. It opened in August 2019. Then it closed during the pandemic and just never reopened.
“The NBA Experience represented Iger’s tenure in a similar way that the Starcruiser represented Chapek’s,” Perjurer said. “Iger was an NBA fan and there were rumors he was going to buy a team. The NBA Experience didn’t hit in the same way.”
The entire Galactic Starcruiser experience, to Perjurer, misunderstood what makes Disney so special, starting with its limited capacity. In his rough calculation, the same number of people who stayed in the Galactic Starcruiser in a year could visit the Magic Kingdom in just one day.
Perjurer conceded that some elements of the Starcruiser could escape back to Galaxy’s Edge, like the stunt show and a few of the walk-around characters. But he wondered if any of these elements would resonate with regular guests, outside of the hermetically sealed world of the Halcyon. What is Gaya without her dinner show?
“No one connected to this came off well,” said one Disney insider. That’s an understatement of galactic proportions.
HokieRaven5
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2020
Looks like at least one streamer would be on board with my bundle all the legacy streamers under Hulu idea I mentioned many months ago:
https://www.thewrap.com/warner-bros-discovery-gunnar-weidenfels-streaming-bundles/
Warner Bros. Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Weidenfels believes that “consumers would benefit from some form of rebundling” of streaming services – but that’s easier said than done.
Weidenfels’ comments echo those of Warner Bros. Disocvery CEO David Zaslav, who revealed last week that he would be open to leveraging Max in a bundle with other streaming services if it meant creating a better experience for consumers.
“For me, it seems very clear that if we were to package this great product that we have with others, if we were to wake up tomorrow and in each market if we’re the No. 1, 2 or 3 product, if we were marketed with two or three [streamers] for a specific price, it would be great for consumers and would probably reduce churn,” Zaslav said during MoffettNathanson’s inaugural Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “We’d both be marketing one product and it would provide a meaningful consumer experience. Not just on price but that ‘OK, I now have a bigger package of content that’s broader.'”
The chief executive warned that if the owners of content don’t consolidate themselves through bundling, then platforms like Roku and tech companies like Amazon and Apple would do it for them.
“Whether we do it this year or in three years, I think eventually something like that will happen. If we don’t do it to ourselves, I think it’ll be done to us,” he said. “It’ll be Amazon that does it, it’ll be Apple that does it, it’ll be Roku that does it. They’re already starting to do it. And it makes sense. A lot of people will go to some of those platforms as an easier curation of finding what they like.”
https://www.thewrap.com/warner-bros-discovery-gunnar-weidenfels-streaming-bundles/
Warner Bros. Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Weidenfels believes that “consumers would benefit from some form of rebundling” of streaming services – but that’s easier said than done.
Weidenfels’ comments echo those of Warner Bros. Disocvery CEO David Zaslav, who revealed last week that he would be open to leveraging Max in a bundle with other streaming services if it meant creating a better experience for consumers.
“For me, it seems very clear that if we were to package this great product that we have with others, if we were to wake up tomorrow and in each market if we’re the No. 1, 2 or 3 product, if we were marketed with two or three [streamers] for a specific price, it would be great for consumers and would probably reduce churn,” Zaslav said during MoffettNathanson’s inaugural Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “We’d both be marketing one product and it would provide a meaningful consumer experience. Not just on price but that ‘OK, I now have a bigger package of content that’s broader.'”
The chief executive warned that if the owners of content don’t consolidate themselves through bundling, then platforms like Roku and tech companies like Amazon and Apple would do it for them.
“Whether we do it this year or in three years, I think eventually something like that will happen. If we don’t do it to ourselves, I think it’ll be done to us,” he said. “It’ll be Amazon that does it, it’ll be Apple that does it, it’ll be Roku that does it. They’re already starting to do it. And it makes sense. A lot of people will go to some of those platforms as an easier curation of finding what they like.”
Disney Bobby
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
I have no doubt that is where we will end up eventually. Everybody hated packages because they were paying for channels they didn't care to watch. Wanted to just buy the channels they watched. That was all good until they figured out that each channel would cost $10. LOL. Now it's back to give me a zillion channels at a discount and I'll ignore the ones I don't care about. Circle of TV life.
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
https://www.boxofficepro.com/weeken...aid-eyes-a-splashy-135-140m-memorial-day-bow/
Weekend Box Office Forecast: Disney’s THE LITTLE MERMAID Eyes a Splashy $135-140M+ Memorial Day Bow
Forecasts & Tracking • Shawn Robbins • May 24 2023
Often one of the most lucrative weekends on the box office calendar, this Memorial Day is shaping up to be a splashy one for Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
While early tracking already pointed to what would have been a healthy $100 million-plus four-day start domestically, pre-release social trends and ticket sales have continued to gain momentum. Independent models now point to a potential four-day bow north of $135 million.
Pinpoint forecasts (see below) are even more bullish.
Worth noting is that overall market business this weekend may exceed last year’s $174.4 million three-day haul from the top ten films over the same holiday corridor, which itself topped the pre-pandemic measuring stick of 2019’s $173.1 million three-day Memorial frame.
Driving optimism is the pent-up demand for a female-driven tentpole with generational appeal, combined with generally positive reviews at a current 73 percent fresh score from 123 Rotten Tomatoes critics.
Pre-sales have steadily gained steam in recent weeks with Wednesday’s early access shows alongside traditional Thursday previews tracking for more than $11 million and potentially upward of $13 million. For reference, 2019’s Aladdin remake earned $7 million from Thursday previews — though the market has certainly evolved in the last four years. Mermaid will naturally be a little more frontloaded.
Just last year, Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick set a new Memorial Day weekend record with a $126.7 million three-day / $160.5 million four-day split, unseating Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 15-year-standing benchmarks of $114.7 million / $139.8 million. Now, one year later, Disney has a chance to eclipse itself with Mermaid having a shot to at least surpass the Pirates threequel for the second best Memorial opening ever.
All of this said, weekend play will be critical to reaching the upward range of potential.
As a heavily female-skewing film, it will be interesting to see how the demographics break out. Aladdin‘s opening weekend drew a 54 percent female audience, compared to The Lion King‘s 53 percent that same summer and Beauty and the Beast‘s 60 percent in 2017.
The original Little Mermaid film was never the box office powerhouse of later Disney animated films in the 1990s, but this modern remake is trending in the right direction to sit alongside some of the studio’s most successful live-action re-imaginings.
On the holdover front, Fast X will see a sharp drop due to natural franchise front-loading and the simultaneous loss of many premium screens to Mermaid.
The previous film, F9, slid over 67 percent in its second frame back in summer 2021 as theatrical recovery was just underway mid-pandemic. That film didn’t face major competition at the time, though Fast X can arguably still coexist as a male-driven tentpole.
Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Super Mario Bros. Movie should benefit from the long holiday weekend and family turnout even with some competition from Mermaid‘s debut.
Several other openers will hit theaters this weekend, though with mostly middling expectations. Lionsgate’s About My Father is likely to be the standout as a comedy counter-programmer with modest family potential, though Sony’s The Machine will have special live screenings to help eventize the Bert Kreischer pic.
Open Road will also launch the Gerard Butler-led Kandahar, while A24 is sending You Hurt My Feelings into moderate release at around an unconfirmed 900 locations. We’re not currently offering forecasts for the latter.
Weekend Forecast & Location Count Projections
Current projection ranges call for a 47 to 57 percent increase from last weekend’s $118.9 million top ten aggregate.
Weekend Box Office Forecast: Disney’s THE LITTLE MERMAID Eyes a Splashy $135-140M+ Memorial Day Bow
Forecasts & Tracking • Shawn Robbins • May 24 2023
Often one of the most lucrative weekends on the box office calendar, this Memorial Day is shaping up to be a splashy one for Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
While early tracking already pointed to what would have been a healthy $100 million-plus four-day start domestically, pre-release social trends and ticket sales have continued to gain momentum. Independent models now point to a potential four-day bow north of $135 million.
Pinpoint forecasts (see below) are even more bullish.
Worth noting is that overall market business this weekend may exceed last year’s $174.4 million three-day haul from the top ten films over the same holiday corridor, which itself topped the pre-pandemic measuring stick of 2019’s $173.1 million three-day Memorial frame.
Driving optimism is the pent-up demand for a female-driven tentpole with generational appeal, combined with generally positive reviews at a current 73 percent fresh score from 123 Rotten Tomatoes critics.
Pre-sales have steadily gained steam in recent weeks with Wednesday’s early access shows alongside traditional Thursday previews tracking for more than $11 million and potentially upward of $13 million. For reference, 2019’s Aladdin remake earned $7 million from Thursday previews — though the market has certainly evolved in the last four years. Mermaid will naturally be a little more frontloaded.
Just last year, Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick set a new Memorial Day weekend record with a $126.7 million three-day / $160.5 million four-day split, unseating Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 15-year-standing benchmarks of $114.7 million / $139.8 million. Now, one year later, Disney has a chance to eclipse itself with Mermaid having a shot to at least surpass the Pirates threequel for the second best Memorial opening ever.
All of this said, weekend play will be critical to reaching the upward range of potential.
As a heavily female-skewing film, it will be interesting to see how the demographics break out. Aladdin‘s opening weekend drew a 54 percent female audience, compared to The Lion King‘s 53 percent that same summer and Beauty and the Beast‘s 60 percent in 2017.
The original Little Mermaid film was never the box office powerhouse of later Disney animated films in the 1990s, but this modern remake is trending in the right direction to sit alongside some of the studio’s most successful live-action re-imaginings.
On the holdover front, Fast X will see a sharp drop due to natural franchise front-loading and the simultaneous loss of many premium screens to Mermaid.
The previous film, F9, slid over 67 percent in its second frame back in summer 2021 as theatrical recovery was just underway mid-pandemic. That film didn’t face major competition at the time, though Fast X can arguably still coexist as a male-driven tentpole.
Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Super Mario Bros. Movie should benefit from the long holiday weekend and family turnout even with some competition from Mermaid‘s debut.
Several other openers will hit theaters this weekend, though with mostly middling expectations. Lionsgate’s About My Father is likely to be the standout as a comedy counter-programmer with modest family potential, though Sony’s The Machine will have special live screenings to help eventize the Bert Kreischer pic.
Open Road will also launch the Gerard Butler-led Kandahar, while A24 is sending You Hurt My Feelings into moderate release at around an unconfirmed 900 locations. We’re not currently offering forecasts for the latter.
Weekend Forecast & Location Count Projections
Current projection ranges call for a 47 to 57 percent increase from last weekend’s $118.9 million top ten aggregate.
| Film | Studio | 3-Day Weekend Forecast | Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, May 28 | Fri Location Count Projection (as of Wed) | 3-Day % Change from Last Wknd | 4-Day Weekend Forecast | Projected Domestic Total through Monday, May 29 |
| The Little Mermaid (2023) | Walt Disney Pictures | $117,800,000 | $117,800,000 | ~4,300 | NEW | $149,000,000 | $149,000,000 |
| Fast X | Universal Pictures | $25,700,000 | $112,300,000 | ~4,046 | -62% | $32,400,000 | $119,000,000 |
| Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 | Disney / Marvel Studios | $19,000,000 | $297,300,000 | ~3,900 | -41% | $24,700,000 | $303,000,000 |
| The Super Mario Bros. Movie | Universal Pictures | $6,000,000 | $558,700,000 | ~3,200 | -37% | $7,600,000 | $560,300,000 |
| About My Father | Lionsgate | $5,300,000 | $5,300,000 | ~2,300 | NEW | $6,500,000 | $6,500,000 |
| The Machine | Sony Pictures / Legendary | $3,800,000 | $3,800,000 | ~2,300 | NEW | $4,600,000 | $4,600,000 |
| Kandahar | Open Road Films | $2,400,000 | $2,400,000 | ~2,000 | NEW | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 |
| Evil Dead Rise | Warner Bros. Pictures | $1,300,000 | $66,400,000 | ~1,100 | -46% | $1,600,000 | $66,700,000 |
wabbott
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
https://deadline.com/2023/05/nba-nh...y-disney-espn-advertising-ratings-1235378329/
Lopsided NBA And NHL Playoff Series Point To Lost Advertising Opportunities For Disney And Warner Bros Despite Overall Ratings Surge
By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
May 24, 2023 4:29pm PDT
After waving their sports flags proudly last week at their upfronts pitches to ad buyers, Disney and Warner Bros Discovery are confronting a head-scratching situation with the NBA and NHL playoffs.
The conference finals in both basketball and hockey — broadcast by WBD’s TNT and Disney’s ESPN and ABC — have been remarkably lopsided. Until Tuesday night’s victory by the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals (on TNT), all four best-of-seven series were threatening to be 4-0 sweeps. The Denver Nuggets completed a sweep of the LA Lakers on Monday night, and the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers are each up 3-0 in the NHL.
Such uneven results are never good for broadcasters in multi-game series and will leave them with lighter-than-expected ad revenue despite plenty of ratings momentum. Last year, ad revenue from the NBA playoffs alone reached $842.4 million. “They could lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue depending on how many games are not played,” media consultant Brad Adgate told Deadline. “It’s pretty much a nightmare scenario, at least for this round.”
Disney declined to comment on the development and a WBD rep did not immediately respond to a sweep inquiry.
The ad shortfall has materialized even as viewership has been healthy. Heading into the conference finals, the NBA playoffs had delivered their biggest overall viewership since 2011 and the NHL had posted double-digit increases over last year’s levels. TNT for the first time is slated to carry the NHL Stanley Cup Final in an alternating-year arrangement with Disney.
Boston’s win on Tuesday averted what would have been the first dual sweeps in the conference finals since the East/West league structure was established in the 1970-71 season. In the NHL, the last time both conference finals have been decided in four straight games was 1992, with that year’s Cup final also a sweep. The Panthers are looking to eliminate the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday in the Eastern Conference Finals.
While many ad slots in the NBA and NHL playoffs are bought well in advance during the upfronts, a significant amount of inventory is transacted in the scatter market. A person familiar with Disney’s sales process said the robust viewership story has helped offset some of the downside of not having as many games. While entertainment programming, in part due to the ongoing WGA strike, has continued to struggle, live sports has continued to be a bright spot.
No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in an NBA playoff series and just three teams in that kind of hole have ever forced a Game 7. If Boston extends the Eastern Conference Finals, WBD would be the beneficiary, as TNT is airing the series after ESPN and ABC carried the Lakers-Nuggets series.
The flurry of wins by one side could lead to an odd lull in the sports calendar. The NBA has set June 1 as the firm starting date for the NBA Finals, with ABC and ESPN running a significant marketing campaign aimed at capturing casual viewers. Boston and Miami play Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Thursday. The NHL has marked June 3 as the beginning of the Stanley Cup Final, though the league could move it up if both finalists are set this week.
As far as the NBA Finals, Adgate is among those who sees plenty of upside for Disney in a Nuggets-Heat matchup. “I could see it getting to more than 20 million viewers,” he said. Denver, which was one of four ABA teams to continue on after its merger with the NBA, has never before been to the Finals. Miami, while lacking in household-name talent, has become a novel attraction this year as a No. 8 seed knocking off heavily favored opponents, plus it plays in a good-sized home market. The opposite outcome from the conference championships, though, would have been guaranteed box office. “Lakers-Celtics is like Dodgers-Yankees,” Adgate said. “They’ve faced each other 12 times before and it’s always been a major draw.”
Lopsided NBA And NHL Playoff Series Point To Lost Advertising Opportunities For Disney And Warner Bros Despite Overall Ratings Surge
By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
May 24, 2023 4:29pm PDT
After waving their sports flags proudly last week at their upfronts pitches to ad buyers, Disney and Warner Bros Discovery are confronting a head-scratching situation with the NBA and NHL playoffs.
The conference finals in both basketball and hockey — broadcast by WBD’s TNT and Disney’s ESPN and ABC — have been remarkably lopsided. Until Tuesday night’s victory by the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals (on TNT), all four best-of-seven series were threatening to be 4-0 sweeps. The Denver Nuggets completed a sweep of the LA Lakers on Monday night, and the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers are each up 3-0 in the NHL.
Such uneven results are never good for broadcasters in multi-game series and will leave them with lighter-than-expected ad revenue despite plenty of ratings momentum. Last year, ad revenue from the NBA playoffs alone reached $842.4 million. “They could lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue depending on how many games are not played,” media consultant Brad Adgate told Deadline. “It’s pretty much a nightmare scenario, at least for this round.”
Disney declined to comment on the development and a WBD rep did not immediately respond to a sweep inquiry.
The ad shortfall has materialized even as viewership has been healthy. Heading into the conference finals, the NBA playoffs had delivered their biggest overall viewership since 2011 and the NHL had posted double-digit increases over last year’s levels. TNT for the first time is slated to carry the NHL Stanley Cup Final in an alternating-year arrangement with Disney.
Boston’s win on Tuesday averted what would have been the first dual sweeps in the conference finals since the East/West league structure was established in the 1970-71 season. In the NHL, the last time both conference finals have been decided in four straight games was 1992, with that year’s Cup final also a sweep. The Panthers are looking to eliminate the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday in the Eastern Conference Finals.
While many ad slots in the NBA and NHL playoffs are bought well in advance during the upfronts, a significant amount of inventory is transacted in the scatter market. A person familiar with Disney’s sales process said the robust viewership story has helped offset some of the downside of not having as many games. While entertainment programming, in part due to the ongoing WGA strike, has continued to struggle, live sports has continued to be a bright spot.
No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in an NBA playoff series and just three teams in that kind of hole have ever forced a Game 7. If Boston extends the Eastern Conference Finals, WBD would be the beneficiary, as TNT is airing the series after ESPN and ABC carried the Lakers-Nuggets series.
The flurry of wins by one side could lead to an odd lull in the sports calendar. The NBA has set June 1 as the firm starting date for the NBA Finals, with ABC and ESPN running a significant marketing campaign aimed at capturing casual viewers. Boston and Miami play Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Thursday. The NHL has marked June 3 as the beginning of the Stanley Cup Final, though the league could move it up if both finalists are set this week.
As far as the NBA Finals, Adgate is among those who sees plenty of upside for Disney in a Nuggets-Heat matchup. “I could see it getting to more than 20 million viewers,” he said. Denver, which was one of four ABA teams to continue on after its merger with the NBA, has never before been to the Finals. Miami, while lacking in household-name talent, has become a novel attraction this year as a No. 8 seed knocking off heavily favored opponents, plus it plays in a good-sized home market. The opposite outcome from the conference championships, though, would have been guaranteed box office. “Lakers-Celtics is like Dodgers-Yankees,” Adgate said. “They’ve faced each other 12 times before and it’s always been a major draw.”
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