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Which would be fine if that were all they did, but they have an entire media empire to feed. The theme parks make money, but not enough to subsidize the rest of the business.
Not only that, but the theme parks are tied to IP. And they’re screwing up the IPs appeal to the kinds of people who would choose Disney themed vacations. Soccer moms are the ones who want to take the kids to Disney or book a Disney cruise. But, this is no longer a guaranteed family friendly brand. They might not let their kids watch Disney, they’d be turned off by gay days at the park (which are pretty well known), and are not family friendly especially if you’re from a conservative part of the country or are religious,
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They should spin out sports. Not a core business.
They should be content creators; not distributors. Hulu was a mistake. Disney+ was a big mistake.
Focus on what makes you different. For them, it is classic IP entangled with some of the most unique family fun vacation spots. Focus on that (distributing the IP in movies and toys; use that IP to get people to vastly overpriced theme parks).
Disney had to make an app. The nightmare scenario was Netflix eating the world, and using their audience control as leverage to take all the profits on any given production after it left theaters. Every studio needed an app as a backup play, so they all made them.
The big mistake was the streaming wars. For a decade, every media exec lost their minds and decided the only way to win was to bury their enemies in piles of content. But, as it turns out, there's just not that many competent people in Hollywood. No amount of money will call forth a writer into existence. If in a given year there's 10 good movies and 10 mediocre ones, then an executive mandate to produce 100 movies will... produce 10 good movies and 90 mediocre ones. Disney+ was full to the top with shitty exclusives and interminable Marvel miniseries that went nowhere and meant nothing.
That's fine, they said. We'll just keep going. Eventually our enemies will run out of money and give up. The stock market will always give us infinite amounts of money and interest rates will always be zero. (The Uber/Lyft playbook, or the explosion in scooter rental apps)
But what if the winner of the streaming wars is... nobody? Disney and Netflix are in trouble. Paramount physically cannot stop making Star Trek junk. Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video are side plays run by notoriously ruthless CEOs who will cut anchor the minute they stop being profitable. The studios have picked a moronic fight with both the unions and started a strike that has dragged on for more than a hundred days. What if they all go bankrupt, and Hollywood has to reboot from nothing?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is actually pretty good. Picard Season 3 wasn’t awful.
I do wonder if Disney would’ve been better off doing Disney+ and just opening up the vault. They already had a lot of great content. They didn’t need to produce new content.
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It has been their corest business aside from maybe parks since ESPN/ABC was acquired. Cable and broadcast is still the company's largest operating profit segment, today. It's financing their streaming losses.
They need to replace that profit as it declines or shrink dramatically. It also boosts returns on their content development, and provides a ton of marketing for their parks and resorts.
One can still make money on content by licensing it to streamers.
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