Many Disney theme park fans have been wondering where Disney is spending it’s money these days. Sure there is the $800 million or so Disney is spending to fix the mistake that is Disneyland’s former parking lot, aka California Adventure, but there doesn’t appear to be a major new attraction on the horizon right now. (American Idol Experience is good, but not a major attraction (aka E-Ticket).
The company is dropping some serious cash elsewhere.
One of those places is ESPN where the Walt Disney Company spends about $2.2 billion dollars annually just to buy broadcast rights to a portion of games in the major sports leagues. That’s basically a new theme park every year. Imagine that.
The reason Disney makes that sort of investment in ESPN each year is that the ad revenues are worth it. But as revealed today, that’s less and less true while at the same time the costs to purchase broadcast rights go up and up.
It will be interesting to see if this results in a shift of resources into the company’s more permanent assets.