NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mickey Mouse will stay on the Walt Disney payroll welcoming children to the Magic Kingdom if Comcast Corp.'s offer for the company succeeds, and the bidders said they would be all ears when it comes to sprucing up the Disney theme parks.
As details of Comcast's surprise $50 billion offer for Disney began to emerge on Wednesday, among the most asked questions was: What about the theme parks?
Comcast executives told Reuters they would be more inclined to keep the parks than to sell them.
"We believe the theme parks could be revitalized. It's a great business," Stephen Burke, executive vice president at Comcast, told Reuters in an interview. Burke is a former Disney executive and former president of Euro Disney.
Comcast said it plans to drive attendance at the parks through advertising and cross-promotion at attractions, hotels and concessions.
That view makes sense, according to analysts who called the parks a key to the Disney brand.
"The theme parks' value is not in the rides. It's the Disney brand. Kids go there to see the characters they know from the movies," said Barry Ritholtz, chief market strategist at Maxim Group, a global money management firm whose clients own Comcast and Disney shares.
Disney's parks business has struggled to recover from the recent U.S. recession and the tourism slump that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
Still, the business -- encompassing such properties as the original Disneyland park in California, Disney World in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland and a minority stake in debt-strapped Euro Disney -- accounts for nearly a third of Disney's revenue and has unmatched brand power.
While many theme parks around the globe continue to suffer from decreased visitors, attendance at Disney parks has been improving.
In December Walt Disney said its California Adventure saw a 13 percent rise in 2003 visitors and Disney's Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland were No. 1 and 2, respectively, worldwide in visitors for the second year in a row.
Industry sources say Comcast would never sell the parks and risk alienating the children drawn to the parks by Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the other characters.
"The Disney theme parks, unlike Universal or SixFlags, are a Disney product, and have that cache. It's the perfect family fare and the parks have no value without the Disney characters," said Ritholtz.
Another incentive for Comcast to keep them is just how hard it would be to sell them, analysts said.
Any buyer would have to negotiate a cumbersome license in perpetuity for the rights to the names and characters, Cathay Financial analyst Andy Baker said.
"They wouldn't want to sell rights for Mickey Mouse and the other guys, and what's a Disney theme park without them?" said Maxim Group's Ritholtz.
"My guess is that Comcast will keep it all together."
By Jui Chakravorty
2/11/04
Source:
Yahoo! News 
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Comcast Likely to Keep Disney Theme Parks 
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