What if Disney was….

Disney has been publicly traded since its early days, however it's important to note that basically operated as an insular good-ole-boys network until the mid 80's when Walt's son in law Ron Miller was canned and activist investors brought in Michael Eisner (keep in mind this was orchestrated by Roy's son, Roy E Disney). After Roy's death the company had some briefly tenured CEOs like Don Tatum and Card Walker before Miller was given the reigns, but Disney still very much was operating under the shadow of Walt and was ran by people that came up under Walt. In the early 80's the company really started to struggle, made a lot of bad movies that bombed, and was losing its luster. It was under serious threat of being bought up and stripped for parts by Wall Street types who thought the assets were worth more than the business, it took Roy to come in and organize a coup against the family members running it to save the company.

So that being said...who knows what things would look like if the company never went public. It would probably not be the gigantic juggernaut hugely successful mega corporation that it became, it is very possible it might not have even lasted and would be long gone by now.

Interesting question.
I think if it were still a Disney family run business then the relationship with it's customer base would likely be more sympathetic.
Unfortunately the reality is money is always the biggest issue. Unless the family owners are the Musks ( not good ) then having the funds to develop things in the way Disney might want to just wouldn't be feasible.
Putting that aside though and thinking of how the Disney family, given the finances , would go forward is quite a cathartic exercise.
It makes me start to consider a lot of the recent changes to MK for instance.
Would they be considered by anything other than a business that needs to satisfy shareholders ? Probably not.
I'd like to think that they would respond more to what we, as customers, would like things to be. That fundamentally means, in my view, maintaining the original concept of being made, most of all, to feel welcome. Do any of us feel truly welcome today ? Probably not.
Ultimately to enter into a space that has more to do with history, fantasy and possiblities for the future than merely trying to separate us from our hard earned money.

I don't necessarily think that being a publicly traded company has changed the way Disney has operated. Let's not forget that making movies and building theme parks are expensive propositions that would not occur at any significant rate if the company was not able to raise funds as a public company. For me, the biggest issue of late is not isolated to Disney, it's the insatiable thirst from Wall Street that has impacted EVERY publicly traded company on the planet. Financial analysts no longer reward established businesses that achieve double digit year over year growth, they EXPECT and DEMAND it quarter after quarter after quarter. Wall Street views company stock not as an investment that slowly pays dividends over time, they instead view stock as an ATM machine that they suck the life out of until their PIN no longer works. It's ruthless and unrelenting on any listed company regardless of the industry, which forces companies to spend as much time and energy on accountants as they do on their core business.

So I don't think Disney's ownership stake has much to do with it, and the pivot towards generating more and more revenue at whatever cost is a plague on virtually every company.

This is my point - Russel - IF Disney was Private they would have plenty of Money to reinvest in their parks and Movies.

They would not have to kowtow to wall street therefore the parks could be better, more creative and prices would be more reasonable.

$400 dollars per night for a basic room is horrible when I can get a room for $200\night at a full resort near the parks.

And thanks for the above responses....

@Brian - But as others have noted, Disney would not have become "Disney" if they were not publicly traded to begin with. They would probably still be a small family company making niche products, lacking the capital investment to grow. Private companies do not grow at the same rate as public companies because they are incapable of raising capital to the extent necessary to grow exponentially, which is what Disney has done for much of the past quarter century.

My point being that Disney has become a slave to the same system that made it. Sure, it's quaint to think Disney as a private, family-owned company that puts customers and employees first, but if that were the case, Disney might never have built WDW or other resorts around the world, and would likely never have become the entertainment juggernaut it is today. In fact, it's more likely that if Disney had remained private (or went private at some point in the late part of the 20th Century), they would almost certainly have been bought by a larger entertainment company or have sold assets (like the theme park division) to raise capital to fund growth.

Sure they would have still become Disney - Private loans - Reinvest in themselves with their profits - Privat equality firms...

It would have taken longer, But Russel - Just Imagine Disney as just Disney and Not wall street - Open you mind to the wonders that could have been.

It's called a Dream.

I'm not so sure, Brian. My wife once worked for a retailer that was purchased by a private equity firm, and the corporate squeeze for more profits ratcheted up tremendously after the acquisition. Consider also, Dillards, one of the most profitable family-run companies out there. They provide an excellent retail experience and their stores are usually quite attractive, but they have also been voted one of the worst companies to work for in America.

So Disney, despite their incessant virtue signaling and an innate desire to offend half of the country, may not be one iota better than they are right now if they were a privately owned company and sure could be a whole lot worse. Imagine if they were owned by Donald Trump.

Well Timmy - If Trump Owned Disney - they would have filed for bankruptcy several times.... HAHAHAHAHAAH

I never said they were went Private after being Public - I am saying think about how different it would be if the Never went Public.

I am trying to get folks to think about thinking. Go deep within your brain and use imagination to create a park without wall street investors pushing the greed button.

Maybe Russel is correct and they parks would have not evolved due to lack on investment.

But I am typing about the creative side - what would the parks look like with no greed...

Great question, Brian.

I can't disagree with the above responses. The only thing I will add is not every CEO would have been a Disney family member private or not so the Disney company vision and strategy would be heavily influenced by who was at the helm and who their senior Board were.

Whilst Eisner was under intense stakeholder pressure he had a completely different vision of the Disney company from Walt and Roy, $$ v family values, and let's face it, his first decade was hugely successful. It was his second decade which people remember more owing to the company's decline.

@Brian - I understand what you're trying to get at here, but let's be realistic. If Disney had been private through the first half of the 20th Century, the likelihood is that if Walt was somehow able to finance the creation of Disneyland, it would have been a much smaller version of what it was and would have grown at an incredibly slow rate. Take a look at Holiday World, which has been family-owned for nearly 80 years and can only install a new major attraction once every 8-10 years. While Holiday World is one of the best independent parks into the world, it has grown at a comparative snail's pace versus other parks that are publicly traded.

Perhaps the company cobbles enough money together to finance the construction of WDW, but it almost certainly wouldn't have opened in the 70's and would have just been the MK through the entirety of the century, and that assumes they would have been able to purchase the amount of land that they own now in Orlando. To think about that for a moment, and consider that if WDW is just MK through 2000, does Universal Orlando even get built, and does Orlando ever become the tourist market it is today?

Assuming they were able to stay truly independent and family-owned, the company today might have 3-5 theme parks and would be a niche animation studio. Disney would be in the same boat as so many other theme park companies that have to purchase IP or create park-specific IPs since they would not be able to build attractions/lands around IPs like Avatar, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Marvel. Disney would never have had the resources to purchase Pixar, and might not have made many of the popular movies of the Eisner era that fill the parks like Little Mermaid, Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. Maybe one of 2 of those movies get made, but there's no way a privately owned Disney would be able to finance those movies that came out in consecutive years.

What most likely would have happened if Disney had remained private and family-owned is what usually happens to family-owned companies. The company would get passed to generation after generation until the heir apparent decides that they aren't interested in running the company, and either hires an outside CEO to operate the company, or puts the company up for sale. Even if whomever is running the company doesn't openly put the business up for sale, if a company like Disney is successful, other companies with the various industries would approach Disney to either buy a controlling stake in the private company or purchase individual business units to absorb into their business.

If you look at almost every privately-held company in the US, that's the typical cycle. To think that Disney could have somehow remained private for over 100 years in industries that require immense capital investment to succeed is to ignore pretty much every business case study in the book.

Russell, I don't think you get the question. It's not, "could Disney have been built of it were a private company", it's "what would happen if Disney as we know it now is a private company, and how would that affect the parks".

To answer the second question, I think Disney would cater to the guest experience and not raising the quarter's earnings. That means less IP and more detail