What Is an Entertainment Company in 2021 and Why Does the Answer Matter? — MatthewBall.co

-Monetize that love

Disney didn’t need a direct-to-consumer SVOD service to successfully tell stories and build love for them; it has always been disintermediated and thrived all the same... Disney+ offers important comparatives advantages to this “easy money”. By bringing all of its franchises and titles together into a single platform, Disney can better tell its sto... See more

At its core, an entertainment business does only three things:

The constant changes in 1-2-3 speaks to how the entertainment industry is changing beyond “D2C SVOD”. The two clearest trends are video gaming/interactivity and multi-media/trans-media/cross-media storytelling. Taken together, this will fundamentally alter competitive dynamics, which stories we love, and how much.

The value of “affinity” is even stronger when applied to media products with scarcity. There’s no real cap on movie tickets or TV viewers, but Elsa dresses are finite, and theme park attendance is controlled. As a result, marginal affinity can drive substantial pricing power. Those who need to go to Disneyland aren’t very price-sensitive, nor are p... See more

Digital theme parks, however, “are always ‘open’, ‘everywhere’, ‘full of your friends’, and impervious to COVID-19… They also boast an even larger (i.e. infinite) number of attractions and rides, none of which need be bound by the laws of physics or the need for physical safety, and all of which can be rapidly updated and personalized. These digita... See more

The major tech companies, such as Amazon, Google, and Apple, are bad at IP, games, or video (if not all three). Disney excels at IP universes and is building up expertise in film-to-TV transmedia, but it has no interactive assets. At the same time, this could change quickly via acquisition — and the applicability of theme park expertise should not ... See more