List of assets owned by The Walt Disney CompanyPerhaps, but even outside of children, that would be tremendously hard to measure and I don't even think offhand it's especially true. I mean, we're on a video game forum; how big is Disney in video games? Not massively so, and that's a far larger market than movies. I don't see what's concerning at all, to be honest.
..they become the sole mediator of a lot of important culture. Regardless of the esteem that you hold something like Marvel or Star Wars in, they are still tremendously important for a lot of people, and allowing a single entity to control broad stretches of pop culture gives them quite a bit of influence over those people. Disney gets to dictate the terms of engagement, and we know they aren't above some pretty heavy handed mediation of their properties. What happens if Disney decides to vault the Avengers? What if they decide to reboot the Star Wars EU again because new leadership wants a fresh start? For the same reasons that people are leery of consolidation in the games industry, we should be just as cautious around traditional media.I still don't see what the big deal is even if they dominated pop media.
There are legitimate concerns about them being able to pressure theaters, sure. But if we're talking control of media, the control that news organizations like Sinclair or Fox have on the general public is a lot more alarming than anything Disney is doing by having huge kid and nerd IPs.
Nah, Sesame Workshop owns their muppets, and the Jim Henson Company still makes muppet stuff (without the muppet name).Only thing they have a "monopoly" on is Muppets, and even that's a stretch.
It's germane because you're just giving me a list of properties. I can get a list of plenty of companies which have properties. You're suggesting that they have undue influence. It's not as simple to demonstrate that by just saying "they have this much". Ok. How are you measuring influence? Why is "media" only things that Disney does well, and not things they're less active in? It's not needed to have absolutely precise numbers, sure, but you're not doing any comparisons at all when comparison is the entire point.List of assets owned by The Walt Disney Company
Disney is huge, even if you just limit what they own to media and distribution. Even doing napkin math you can get a rough picture of just how big of the pie they are, and I'm sorry, it just feels disingenuous to say "we can't measure the importance of Star Wars, Marvel, and the entire Disney Catalogue." Can you measure it down to a t? No, but then doesn't mean we can get a decent estimate based on the buzz generated online, the amount of merchandise made/sold, the number of tickets sold, the number of subs, etc. that these properties generate.
I don't get how gaming is germane to this conversation. The existence of a larger market doesn't make the potential domination of a smaller one not an issue. Relatively speaking it's a smaller fish to fry, but that doesn't make the size of Disney not an issue because...
I think this has already happened like a dozen times on that Disneyland Twitter accountI would prefer a revolution where the Mouse is executed and Goofy ascends the throne
..they become the sole mediator of a lot of important culture. Regardless of the esteem that you hold something like Marvel or Star Wars in, they are still tremendously important for a lot of people, and allowing a single entity to control broad stretches of pop culture gives them quite a bit of influence over those people. Disney gets to dictate the terms of engagement, and we know they aren't above some pretty heavy handed mediation of their properties. What happens if Disney decides to vault the Avengers? What if they decide to reboot the Star Wars EU again because new leadership wants a fresh start? For the same reasons that people are leery of consolidation in the games industry, we should be just as cautious around traditional media.
Sorry, I edited that part. I meant to say I don't see how the size of gaming is germane. I'm suggesting they have a great amount of influence via their ownership of the Disney Catalogue, Marvel, LucasFilm, and 21 Century Fox, the cultural cache they derive from those properties, and the amount of money those properties generate. Their closest competitor would be, what, Paramount? Paramount has its movie arm, CBS, and Viacom's stable of brand(Nick, MTV, BET, Comedy Central probably being the largest). Paramount's IP is not nothing, they own the rights to a lot of classic films, Spongebob, South Park, Star Trek, etc.It's german because you're just giving me a list of properties. I can get a list of plenty of companies which have properties. You're suggesting that they have undue influence. It's not as simple to demonstrate that by just saying "they have this much". Ok. How are you measuring influence? It's not needed to have absolutely precise numbers, sure, but you're not doing any comparisons at all when comparison is the entire point.
I don't recall ever saying any of this matters from a business or legal sense.This quite literally doesn't matter in any business or legal sense. It's not in the same galaxy in terms of concern as, say, Disney strong-arming theaters in what is essentially an anti-competitive way.
WarnerBros Discovery is significantly more meaningful than Paramount, as is NBC Universal.Sorry, I edited that part. I meant to say I don't see how the size of gaming is germane. I'm suggesting they have a great amount of influence via their ownership of the Disney Catalogue, Marvel, LucasFilm, and 21 Century Fox, the cultural cache they derive from those properties, and the amount of money those properties generate. Their closest competitor would be, what, Paramount? Paramount has its movie arm, CBS, and Viacom's stable of brand(Nick, MTV, BET, Comedy Central probably being the largest). Paramount's IP is not nothing, they own the rights to a lot of classic films, Spongebob, South Park, Star Trek, etc.
My gut would say Disney is the bigger presence of the two in regards to how influential/well regarded their IP, but that's a hunch so let's say they're equal. I would levy much of the same concern I have for Disney at Paramount honestly. Maybe it's marginally better that there's two massive media conglomerates instead of one, but just barely.
Well, I bring up gaming because you're saying they have undue influence in media. To which I say, ok, why is "media" only areas where Disney does well? Why not look at gaming? Are you saying games don't have impact on culture? It seems very oddly constrained and I don't know why that would be the case.Sorry, I edited that part. I meant to say I don't see how the size of gaming is germane. I'm suggesting they have a great amount of influence via their ownership of the Disney Catalogue, Marvel, LucasFilm, and 21 Century Fox, the cultural cache they derive from those properties, and the amount of money those properties generate. Their closest competitor would be, what, Paramount? Paramount has its movie arm, CBS, and Viacom's stable of brand(Nick, MTV, BET, Comedy Central probably being the largest). Paramount's IP is not nothing, they own the rights to a lot of classic films, Spongebob, South Park, Star Trek, etc.
My gut would say Disney is the bigger presence of the two in regards to how influential/well regarded their IP, but that's a hunch so let's say they're equal. I would levy much of the same concern I have for Disney at Paramount honestly. Maybe it's marginally better that there's two massive media conglomerates instead of one, but just barely.
I didn't bring up gaming because this thread was about Disney. Come the fuck on man. This is some strawman bullshit.Well, I bring up gaming because you're saying they have undue influence in media. To which I say, ok, why is "media" only areas where Disney does well? Why not look at gaming? Are you saying games don't have impact on culture? It seems very oddly constrained and I don't know why that would be the case.
Ok so you're just not even reading posts then. Got it.Similarly, how are we assessing cache at all? Box office? Eyeballs? Markets? Merchandise? Average Q score? I don't see how Disney is so massively ahead of their peers, nor how it's problematic.
Right, and your posts are about how Disney has undue influence. Why would gaming not be an arena in which they could have undue influence? Why is it that the area wherein we consider improper amounts of cultural sway is somehow limited? If it's not going to include gaming, why is this such a worry when the likes of, say, movies are so much smaller as a market?I didn't bring up gaming because this thread was about Disney. Come the fuck on man. This is some strawman bullshit.
Ok so you're just not even reading posts then. Got it.
Sure, either of those will do, but it doesn't change basic criticism I have. There should be scrutiny for those corporations as well as they continue to grow.WarnerBros Discovery is significantly more meaningful than Paramount, as is NBC Universal.
...Because Disney's gaming presence is practically non-existant. Why would I bring up their ability to wield influence over a sector that they're barely involved in? Do I really need to explain how the money generated by a property can be linked to the popularity and influence of the property? Revenue isn't the only thing I listed as contributing to influence either.Right, and your posts are about how Disney has undue influence. Why would gaming not be an arena in which they could have undue influence? Why is it that the area wherein we consider improper amounts of cultural sway is somehow limited?
So you'd say revenue? Why?
nah, let's instead accuse the op of being a republican parrot because he wants to break up my favorite comic book movie company 😡
Because you're suggesting they have an improper amount of impact on media and culture. Media and culture is more than movies and TV....Because Disney's gaming presence is practically non-existant. Why would I bring up their ability to wield influence over a sector that they're barely involved in?
I am suggesting they have an amount of influence deserving of scrutiny, especially as they grow. I said nothing about it being an 'improper' amount. If they are not involved in a specific kind of media, their cultural impact via that medium is not relevant in their overall output. If it's not relevant, which is to say, their impact in that medium is low to non-existant, then I see no reason to discuss it in this conversation. It's dwarfed by their efforts in movies, TV, comics, and books.Because you're suggesting they have an improper amount of impact on media and culture. Media and culture is more than movies and TV.
Right, but that doesn't mean gaming has no impact on culture. So again, besides the fact that Disney is not very impactful in gaming, why would I not include gaming if I wanted to get a sense of which companies are unduly influencing culture? That Disney is not in gaming is an argument against them being improper in how they affect culture. Why would I only want to look at movies and TV when trying to direct scrutiny based on influence? This is like those arguments people were making fun of up above; yeah, sure, if you arbitrarily slice "media" in a way that just so happens to include the efforts of a large portion of some company, then you can make any entity look bad.I am suggesting they have an amount of influence deserving of scrutiny, especially as they grow. I said nothing about it being an 'improper' amount. If they are not involved in a specific kind of media, their cultural impact via that medium is not relevant in their overall output. If it's not relevant, which is to say, their impact in that medium is low to non-existant, then I see no reason to discuss it in this conversation. It's dwarfed by their efforts in movies, TV, comics, and books.
Literally did not say this. Just a straight up strawman argument.
Why wouldn't you include it? Because it was never part of this conversation to begin with, and you'd have to argue that the cultural impact(not just financial) of games is dwarfing all other mediums, which is something you have yet to substantiate.So again, besides the fact that Disney is not very impactful in gaming, why would I not include gaming if I wanted to get a sense of which companies are unduly influencing culture? That Disney is not in gaming is an argument against them being improper in how they affect culture. Why would I only want to look at movies and TV?
It's not a strawman. You said that they have too much influence on culture. You refuse to look at gaming, for reasons I don't know other than Disney doesn't have influence there. Ok, so they don't have too much influence. It *is* part of the conversation, because you said they had an effect on culture. Gaming is included in culture. Your failure is accurately present your side or make an argument besides "No I don't want to talk about that section of media, despite making claims about media, for no reason other than it proves me wrong" is entirely that.Literally did not say this. Just a straight up strawman argument.
Why wouldn't you include it? Because it was never part of this conversation to begin with, and you'd have to argue that the cultural impact(not just financial) of games is dwarfing all other mediums, which is something you have yet to substantiate.
But I'm done. It's clear we don't agree on this and that neither of us is going to be convinced of what the other has to say, so there's no point in continuing this exchange.
I mean, you said "Maybe it's marginally better that there's two massive media conglomerates instead of one, but just barely."Sure, either of those will do, but it doesn't change basic criticism I have. There should be scrutiny for those corporations as well as they continue to grow.
Personally I've felt they were inevitably going to sell a lot of the Fox stuff whenever they hit a rough patch again. Like, a lot of that stuff is really hard to square with their brand, and they're not doing anything with it.
List of assets owned by The Walt Disney Company
Disney is huge, even if you just limit what they own to media and distribution. Even doing napkin math you can get a rough picture of just how big of the pie they are, and I'm sorry, it just feels disingenuous to say "we can't measure the importance of Star Wars, Marvel, and the entire Disney Catalogue." Can you measure it down to a t? No, but then doesn't mean we can't get a decent estimate based on the buzz generated online, the amount of merchandise made/sold, the number of tickets sold, the number of subs, etc. that these properties generate.
I don't get how the size of gaming is germane to this conversation. The existence of a larger market doesn't make the potential domination of a smaller one not an issue. Relatively speaking it's a smaller fish to fry, but that doesn't make the size of Disney is not an issue because...
..they become the sole mediator of a lot of important culture. Regardless of the esteem that you hold something like Marvel or Star Wars in, they are still tremendously important for a lot of people, and allowing a single entity to control broad stretches of pop culture gives them quite a bit of influence over those people. Disney gets to dictate the terms of engagement, and we know they aren't above some pretty heavy handed mediation of their properties. What happens if Disney decides to vault the Avengers? What if they decide to reboot the Star Wars EU again because new leadership wants a fresh start? For the same reasons that people are leery of consolidation in the games industry, we should be just as cautious around traditional media.
That doesn't make consolidation in popular not an issue though. You're bringing up a completely unrelated point to the current argument.
Yeah even that doesn't work, that's like saying Disney has a monopoly on Disney. Jim Henson Creatureshop still exists as it's own thing, and makes puppets for all kinds of other movies and TV projects. It's specifically the Muppet characters themselves that Disney owns. Which is why the Elmo cameo/joke from The Muppets had to be scrapped ):Only thing they have a "monopoly" on is Muppets, and even that's a stretch.
Both of these actually sound super reasonable.What happens if Disney decides to vault the Avengers? What if they decide to reboot the Star Wars EU again because new leadership wants a fresh start?
Disney has a lot of different businesses under their conglomerate, so let's break it down by the major ones.
As a technology company, Disney would have to have market domination of streaming and then use that market position to unfairly restrict the operation of other streaming providers. Currently Disney+ is about 4th in popularity, behind Netflix, Amazon, Crunchyroll (surprise by this), though the definition of a streaming provider is imprecise, if we factor in streaming services like YouTube or Twitch, then Disney drops further... YouTube's ~2.5b users dwarfs every other streaming service. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have more people watching streams too, so it gets further diluted if you factor those, but most people don't. But, regardless of how you slice it up, Disney does not have a monopoly on streaming. The complaint most people have with streaming is "fragmentation," pretty much the opposite of a monopoly, that there are so many competitors that popular shows are split across too many networks or streaming services and that people don't want to have to pay $9/mo for Disney and $15/mo for Netflix and $6/mo for Hulu, etc just to watch their favorite shows/movies.
As a media production company, there's like 4-5 major competitors (Universal, Paramount, WB, Columbia), though Disney is probably the strongest these days. But being the strongest out of 4 or 5 doesn't make whoever the strongest production company is a monopoly. You can't really have a monopoly in a genre of films, either, so like DIsney might make the most super hero action movies, or in the 80s, Disney might have made the most high quality animated movies, but those are genres of movies, and there's something like 700-800 movies released in North America a year, only a fraction of those are owned by Disney. Of the ~800 movies released in 2019, Disney owned 19 of them, and some were massive. Avengers Endgame was the most popular box office movie in 2019, but for some comparison, as many people watched the Adam Sandler who-dun-it "Murder Mystery" in its opening weekend on Netflix as went to see Avengers: Endgame, about 30-35m people. Murder Mystery has probably had more viewers over the life of both movies, as Netflix' subscriber count dwarfed Disney+ back in 2019, but neither company releases those statistics so it's hard to really know. That isn't to say that Netflix or Adam Sandler has a monopoly on films, but rather, just that there's a lot of competition. If there is a monopoly for Disney, film production is the best argument, but it's a weak one because there are about 4 major film production competitors, and then dozens of smaller production companies. Disney has a lot of influence in film production, though, and if they ever get pinched for anti-competitive behavior, I think it'll be in film.
Theme Park business, this is compelling because there aren't a lot of theme park competitors and none at Disney's scale, but there's also just not a ton of major companies getting into the theme park game because that was tried 20 years ago and most couldn't succeed (Hard Rock and Planet Hollywood ring a bell...). Disney doesn't have a monopoly on theme parks, there's dozens of theme parks operating around Disney world, but in terms of that national scale, there's really only a couple others (Universal, Six Flags, maybe a water park brand like Great Wolf Lodge or something, Sea World, Busch Gardens, etc). Running a theme park is generally not a very profitable business and it's challenging.
Hospitality, running hotels, restaurants, and cruises, vacation rentals, etc, nah, not close, Disney doesn't even crack the top 10. Even just in Orlando, Disney's HQ, Marriott has 115 hotels in the area, and while I can't find the total number of available rooms for Marriott, Hilton, Wyndam, etc, in Orlando alone, I'd imagine they're pretty similar or perhaps even more capacity than Disney.
Disney is in the real estate industry as well, but is a minor player, and I'd imagine they have financial services as well as a major conglomerate, but aren't major.
Disney is a company that has a lot of different businesses. Technology, broadcasting, production, hospitality, entertainment, finance, real estate, a lot more that I'm not aware of I'm sure, but they don't fit the description of a monopoly in basically any of them. The best example of a monopoly in the United States continues to be Microsoft 20+ years ago, that used it's market domination of the home computer business (90%+) to prevent new competitors and new businesses from getting a foothold. It was a pretty clear case, well executed by the government, and Microsoft is a better business now because they got slapped by the feds.
If there's going to be a new monopoly case... I think arguments could be made for Google, Amazon, or Facebook, though none of them would pass muster, I think they could, or even without going monopoly on them, simple small scale anti-trust cases making them uncomfortable, causing Amazon to split off AWS or Google to split off it's ads division. I think both of these things should be done anyway, but I don't have the legal rationale for how they would be done... I think it'd just be good for the internet, good for business, good for everybody if they did split, and really I think it'd be good for Amazon, Google, etc, if they did too. I'd also look out for a company like Uber. They're not close to a monopoly now, but ... an aggressive FTC + FCC in ~5 years could possibly find a case there. Right now there's just no case, but if Uber ever gets to "the super app" phase that many experts think they're going for (transportation, hospitality, finance, food, messaging, social, etc), then they might be one of the most powerful technology companies in the US. It's just not there though, but even in transportation Uber is better positioned than every other company and they've just run a really good business. An argument can really be made, too, that if Uber becomes the sole tech ride hailing app or so dominant that they may as well be the sole one, that it's bad for consumers around price/availability/convenience, and bad for their "contractors" around wages. That argument is already being made but Uber has been skillful at not cashing in on their position yet, so the public still mostly loves Uber (and Uber Eats), so there's not a ton of scrutiny yet.
Why does Star Wars and Lucas film belong to Lucas and his estate? They willingly sold it. It doesn't belong to Lucas and co. anymore. I don't get why you would think thatBecause yeah, Disney's Empire needs to be broken up.
I'd give Star Wars and Lucasfilm back to Lucas and his estate. It's where it belongs.
Most of the Fox acquired properties, I'd give back to Fox.
Marvel I might just have go back to being independent.
They can keep Pixar.
I think it's a shame he sold SW but I agree. Can't do anything about it if the man doesn't want it, any more.Why does Star Wars and Lucas film belong to Lucas and his estate? They willingly sold it. It doesn't belong to Lucas and co. anymore. I don't get why you would think that
I'd give Star Wars and Lucasfilm back to Lucas and his estate. It's where it belongs.
Because they dictate unfair competitive terms to theaters. For example, you have to show a Disney movie for at least 3 weeks. Small theaters are giving up a screen for a long time because they know they won't survive without the revenue from that. How is that a fair dictation to the other studios competing with Disney?I don't know why people are arguing with trashbandit. He's obviously not acting in good faith. For example, he ignored this post:
Disney is nowhere near a Monopoly in cinemas, when it is one of the American movie companies that releases the fewest movies per year! How would it have a monopoly when most of its competitors release more movies?
To add on to this, Disney is a supporter of the Muslim Genocide down in china, They don't actually give a flying fuck about us queerfolk, they make sure that all LGBTQ+ rep is as obscure as possible on their kids movies, they won't hesitate to censor out promotions, scenes, episodes, or even fucking entire TV shows (like they almost did with planning to abruptly cancel the owl house) for having minority representation that is controversial, because people don't know how to treat people with kindness despite their differences.Because they dictate unfair competitive terms to theaters. For example, you have to show a Disney movie for at least 3 weeks. Small theaters are giving up a screen for a long time because they know they won't survive without the revenue from that. How is that a fair dictation to the other studios competing with Disney?
Also lmao at people in this thread accusing OP of parroting Republicans. Just because Disney is in the cross hairs of culture war bullshit doesn't mean that them being as big as they are and the fact that they've basically written copyright law in the US are good things. They're not.