Universal Studios and Disney are two of the world's top parks, but many people may not be very aware of their respective strengths and characteristics.
Who's bigger?
Worldwide, Disney is far larger than Universal Studios.
There are 6 Disney parks and 5 Universal Studios in the world, and the total area of Disneyland is much larger than universal studios. Disney has 6 hotels in the world, the total area of park resorts is nearly 150 square kilometers, while the total area of Universal Studios is only about 6 square kilometers.
The world's largest Disneyland is located in Orlando, USA, with a total resort area of 122 square kilometers, which is the size of two Yangpu districts.
Correspondingly, Disney has more visitors. In 2019, Disney received more than 157 million visitors, making it the world's most visited theme park company, with Universal Studios ranking fourth in the world with a total of 51.24 million visitors.
In terms of income, Disney is also more profitable. In fiscal 2019, Universal Studios generated revenue of $5.93 billion, or $2.46 billion, while Disneyland's revenue reached $26.22 billion, or $6.76 billion.
Who has the most IPs?
In addition to the hardware facilities, IP construction is the soul pillar of the theme park.
Globally, Disney's IP resources are much richer and more profitable than Universal Studios.
In the world's top 20 most profitable IP rankings, Walt Disney has 7 IPs, including Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Disney Princesses and other animated characters known to all ages. Universal, on the other hand, only owns the rights to the Hulk in the Marvel Universe.
With a huge IP resource library, each image in Disneyland is owned by itself, and there is no need to acquire copyrights.
Universal Studios must introduce external IP, provided by excellent content companies, and Universal Studios is responsible for the design and construction of post-amusement facilities. The most well-known of these are the super IP "Transformers" and "Harry Potter".
This has led to a completely different IP creation route between the two parks. Sam Gennawey, the author of The Disneyland Story, once commented that Disney is building a forest, while Universal Studios is cultivating a towering tree.
This view can be seen in the zoning of the two parks. Disneyland's divisions are generally based on a storyline, revolving around traditional fairy tale themes such as the future, fantasy, and adventure, which can be reused in different parks, interspersed with Disney characters. The partitions of Universal Studios are centered on powerful IP, and each theme area is a separate IP universe.
Who can stimulate tourists to spend twice?
Guiding visitors to secondary consumption is the main task of the amusement park, and Disney is very tough on this point.
Disney's ticket revenue in fiscal 2019 was $7.5 billion, but its secondary consumption was as high as $18.7 billion, accounting for more than 70% of total revenue. Among them, the revenue of IP authorized development and self-operated commemorative goods was 4.52 billion US dollars.
Whether for Universal Studios or Disney, the profit margin of derivatives is higher than that of the operating park itself, especially in the context of the epidemic, the online sales of self-operated goods have become an important source of income for theme parks, and "selling peripherals" is a must-do thing.
Disney has a lot of experience in derivatives marketing, according to the "2021 TOP75 IP Global Licensor Report" released by a third party, Disney has pushed its peers to take the first place, and its retail sales of licensed goods in 2020 reached $54 billion. NBCUniversal ranked sixth with $7.5 billion in sales.
A Duffy bear with no basis in the work can fission a whole family, creating a marketing case of thousands of yuan crazy snatching of a Mid-Autumn Festival star, which reflects the efforts of Disney to cater to the tastes of customers.
Tokyo Disneyland has disclosed that in recent years, the ratio of Disney tourists to men and women has been 3:7, and the proportion of female tourists has increased year by year. That is to say, whoever catches the appetite of female tourists can sell more peripherals, and Xing dailu also conforms to this truth.
The specific data on the proportion of Universal Studios' secondary consumption has not been made public, but it is clear that Universal Studios still has a long way to go to catch up with Disney.
The case of Japan
Japan has both Universal Studios and Disney, and the comparison is even more interesting.
Disney, Japan is located in Tokyo and was built in 1982. Universal Studios Japan is located in Osaka and opened in 2001.
Although Universal Studios Osaka achieved a good result of 11.02 million annual passengers in the first year, it fell to 7.64 million in the second year, and in the following decade, it basically maintained about 8 million visitors, which could not be compared with the high popularity of Disneyland with more than 20 million visitors.
In response to the reasons why Universal Studios Osaka was "not hot" in the early days, Japanese netizens gave various answers, such as Universal Studios' performances were not as wonderful as Disney's, they used to sell expired food, and there were many amusement facilities with height restrictions...
In recent years, Universal Studios Osaka has begun to take the road of local IP, and the situation has changed.
In 2012, Universal Studios Osaka began to combine Japanese IP with overseas IP, opening a theme park of "Snoopy (USA) + Hello Kitty (Japan) + Sesame Street", attracting more than 9.75 million visitors, successfully achieving the first high growth in 10 years. The new Harry Potter campus was built in 2014, once again setting a new record, with more than 12.7 million people.
Since then, Japan's native IP has become a regular visitor to Universal Studios Osaka, and through a variety of adaptations, it has increased the experience of tourists. For example, the VR roller coaster of "Evangelion", the "One Piece" stage play, the escape room of "Detective Conan", the 4D movie of "Attack on Titan" and so on.
Since then, Universal Studios Osaka's passenger traffic and ticket prices have been rising.
Under the epidemic situation in 2020, Universal Studios Osaka and Tokyo Disney both faced huge losses, while Universal Studios Osaka chose to invest $500 million to build a "super Nintendo world", once again relying on new IP to go out of its own unique road.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Mo Text Editor: Wu Danlu
Source: Author: Wu Danlu Lian Junxiang Lin Chengcheng