Why Warner Bros, Netflix or Paramount should buy Six Flags.
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1.8 billion dollars is the market cap for Six Flags Amusement Parks.
1.497 billion dollars was the revenue for 2021.
130 million dollars was the profit.
28 million people attended one of their 27 amusement/water parks in the US.
The biggest one is Six Flags Great Adventure, where 3.2 million people attended last year and it is 500 acres, putting it around the same size as Disney Land.
With a valuation of 1.8 billion dollars, here’s why EVERY major competitor to Disney should just buy them out right now.
Netflix is valued at 142 billion dollars.
Warner Discover is valued at 26 billion dollars.
Paramount is valued at 12.5 billion.
Each of these has the ability to easily buy Six Flags, where just for example, Paramount made 30 billion in revenue in 2021, with 4.5 billion in profit, it’d not even be a sacrifice of 50% of profit to buy Six Flags.
Why this is worth so much.
82.7 billion dollars is Disney’s revenue for 2022.
27 billion dollars of that came from theme parks.
32.9% total
One third of Disney is currently theme parks, in a market still recovering from COVID, where it’ll likely be 35-40% in 2023/2024.
Six Flags has more land spread around North American than Disney Land and Disney World combined, but numbers wise just doesn’t do it.
3.2 million is the current yearly attendance for Six Flags Great Adventure.
Disney Land pre COVID was hitting 18 million people yearly.
These are for two parks, pretty much exactly the same size.
Which obvious factor here is weather, with Six Flags Great Adventure being in New Jersey, where Disney’s World/Land are both in areas it’s warm all year. That said, summer attendance on Six Flags is comparable to Disney Land.
This does show a case to the public, the brand is worth a similar amount.
For Six Flags, they’ve also worked with every studio minus Disney on creating theme park attractions, where for decades, they’ve just been a more affordable Disney closer in many parts of the US.
Why a major studio should buy Six Flags though.
Branding
Disney for years had kept a brand to it no studio has, where the theme parks are the center of it.
Go to any classroom in the United States and ask elementary school kids their ideal vacation spot. If at least one kid doesn’t say Disney in every classroom, I’ll give $1,000.
That power keeps people coming back, where if Six Flags was rebranded to something like “Warner Studios” or “Warner Adventures”, they’ll get a bigger footprint for people to see them as a cohesive brand.
Sales will increase if done properly.
Universal put over 500 million dollars building the Harry Potter world, which is now the biggest attraction, where it was reported it increased ticket sales over 40% in the years that followed. It also today makes up over half of food/merchandise sales in the park.
Warner never owned the theme park rights to Harry Potter, where Rowling was originally going to go to Disney in the 2000s, but thought Bob Iger had a cheap plan, so Universal committed to a bigger project and she went with them.
If Warner did own something like Six Flags though, they could have promised Rowling Harry Potter parks all across the US, which could have boosted sales.
For brands such as DC, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and other properties Warner owns, owning Six Flags could be a major brand expansion, putting a property into each theme park as a main attraction.
This also holds for Paramount and Netflix, which own franchises such as SpongeBob and Stranger Things, that can also do well.
Benefit is it’ll up merchandise and ticket sales, where these parks could see a noticeable spike in revenue.
It wouldn’t lose money.
Even if I was wrong on all this and ticket sales didn’t go up, they’d still have a profitable asset, which would get whatever company to buy/rebrand Six Flags as the Pepsi to Disney’s Coke.
Six Flags in the last 25 years only lost money a few years. One was obviously 2020 and the other was 2009 and 2011, largely due to the recession and some corporate changes. Outside of that, it’s always been a pretty self sufficient brand with a good profit margin.
Even if not the next Disney Land, it’d be a fairly low cost investment, compared to other junk things guys put money into.
Final thoughts
Six Flags seems a little underrated, where attendance, profit and revenue all point to the idea it could be part of something bigger.
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