Recent years have witnessed a high-speed development in China theme park industry, as Disney entered China mainland this year, the competition in this industry is getting more and more fierce.
“Disney really shouldn’t have entered the mainland.” Wang Jianlin, the chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group said on China Central Television on Aug 26th. Soon the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger responded that doing business in China is tough, but the potential rewards remain compelling. I personally think that Disney and Wanda Group are basically counterparts as both company are involved in both movie industry as well as theme parks. But when considering the intellectual property value, we have to admit that Disney has the upper hand.
Let’s take Disney for example. As is shown from the industrial structure drawn by Walt Disney, Disney always insist that the development of TV, music, publications, theme parks and theatrical films should be coordinated. From my point of view, TV and movies should be at the core of service as it is the start of the chain. Moreover, media offers the information dissemination channels, derived goods build higher popularity and theme parks make Disney culture eternal classic. Also, recent open data shows that up to March 28th, Disney has reached a total revenue of 12.46 billion dollars in which tickets accounts for 30% and revenue from Disney shops occupies 25%. In comparison, theme parks are not the basic source of income for Wanda Group, the “2015 annual report of Wanda Group” reveals that commercial real estate, hotels and chain department stores were the top3 income source in 2015. Based on evidence given above, Disney is quite hard to compete with.
However, recent development in China presents massive opportunities for Wanda Group. Chinese government has adopted legislation establishing more legal holiday and more high-speed line has been constructed. Both changes give people in China more accessibility for leisure, in which theme park construction plan if Wanda may benefit from in the long-run. In addition, in the first theme park constructed by Wanda Group in Nanchang, half of its 4.8 million sqm is constructed for rental and sale and revenue gained from it will be supplied to further culture development of the park.
It is projected that there is significant space for development for future theme park industry in China. Richard Huang, an analysist in entertainment industry from Nomura promoted that Chinese only spend 3 dollars on theme parks yet the figure for US is 58 dollars.
It is my personal view that China theme park industry will be facing shuffling within 10 years and Wanda Group will soon prevail as the focus on buiding IP value of its theme parks.
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Work cited
“Disney vs. Wanda: How the Two Theme Parks Stack Up.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.
“Disney vs. Wanda: How the Two Theme Parks Stack Up.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.
“CEO Bob Iger Said Doing Business in China Is Tough. ” Disney CEO: China Is Tough but a ‘great Opportunity’.
“Days after Disney Opened Its First Theme Park in China, It Is Already Planning a Second.” Quartz. N.p., 2016. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.
“China’s Richest Man Opens Theme Park With Warning for Disney.” Time. Time, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.
“Wanda Unveils First Cultural Tourism City, Aiming to Become World’s Top Brand-Wanda Group.”. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.
“China Drives Asia’s Theme Park Growth. ” Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2016.