United Parks reports lower attendance, revenue in 2025
Attendance and revenue dropped at the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens theme parks in 2025, parent company United Parks reported today.
The company reported that its parks welcomed 21.2 million guests in 2025, down 1.8% from 2024. Total revenue dropped 3.6% for the year, to $1.7 billion. That contributed to a 26% drop in net income, to $168.4 million for the year.
The company's attendance decline accelerated in the final three months of 2025. Attendance was down 2.6% for the quarter when compared with the same period one year earlier, to 4.8 million guests. Total revenue dropped 2.8% in the quarter compared with the year prior, to $373.5 million. Net income was down 46%, to $15.1 million, which included a one-time write-off of $7.6 million in bad debt.
For the year, total revenue per capita dropped 1.9% to $78.54. However, the company pointed to a 1% increase in in-park per capita spending in 2025, to a record $36.81.
Nevertheless, United Parks spent $157 million last year to repurchase 4.2 million shares of common stock, which accounted for approximately 7.6% of its total shares outstanding. The company accelerated its stock buy-back in the first quarter of 2026, spending about $90.1 million so far this year to buy about another 2.5 million shares, or approximately another 4.5% of total shares outstanding.
Company officials pointed to lower international attendance in driving the decline in 2025 and now into 2026. (They also blamed the effects of unfavorable weather, but that has become a common excuse cited in United Parks and Six Flags earnings reports.)
"Our fiscal 2025 results did not meet our expectations," CEO Marc Swanson said. "While the consumer environment was uneven and our results were impacted by negative international tourism trends and volatile weather during certain peak visitation periods, we should have delivered better results, particularly on the cost side of the income statement. We have moved decisively to address our less than optimal cost management and have updated and focused our plans and investments for 2026 designed to drive attendance and guest spending across our parks."
SeaWorld San Antonio next week will open its Barracuda Strike family coaster, while SeaWorld Orlando will open a new dark ride, SEAQuest: Legends of the Deep, later this year. SeaWorld San Diego is refreshing its Shark Encounter, while Busch Gardens Williamsburg is reimagining its Verbolten roller coaster with new storytelling and special effects, in Verbolten - Forbidden Turn. In Tampa, Busch Gardens is opening a new Lion & Hyena Ridge habitat.
Replies (14)
The constant blame of poor results on the weather is getting ridiculous, and yet instead of trying to use that "excuse" to drive change and increase resiliency, they play the "woe is me" card and double down by saying "at least we're not Six Flags".
It's frankly pathetic, because United Parks does have so much going for it, and they can tell some positive stories to combat all of the negativity. The new attraction in Orlando is indoors, so should increase attraction capacity during poor weather. The new coaster in San Antonio will increase the ability of that park to attract families and groom young thrill seekers who will come back when they are big enough to ride the parks more thrilling rides. BGW is committing resources to increase theming on one of their already highly themed attractions, which shows a commitment to higher quality attractions that was becoming a common complaint among long-time fans.
However, this is what happens when you let private equity buy controlling stake in the service/hospitality industry. Every one of these transactions has eventually led to further decline. The fact that Swanson wants to improve "the cost side of the income statement" while committing so much capital to stock buybacks is exactly why the company has been losing money, because the product can't match the experiences top parks and loyal guests are growing frustrated with the constant excuses and cutbacks.
Perhaps the admission that the company is not living up to expectations is a corner that can be turned, and the fact that United are not Six Flags means it is just a corner to be turned and not pulling a 180 with the Titanic steaming towards an iceberg is promising. However, at some point this company needs to have a heart to heart with itself and understand that there is a middle ground where they can succeed between SF and Disney/Universal.
Something just occurred to me- every United park is located in the same region as a larger, or nearly as large, park. BGW is near KD, SWO and BGT are right next to MK and UOR, SWSA is in the same city as SFFT, and SWSD is in a high- concentration area of Southern Californian parks.
What I'm getting at is that United hasn't differentiated itself against other major players in the industry. Which is strange, considering the "new-expansion-every-year" approach that they've taken with the Busch Gardens parks and SWO. My guess is that they aren't putting in those showstopping, major attractions that draw people to the nearby parks, but they also aren't investing in maintenance, groundskeeping, and operations that would convince people to pay a premium advice for a premium experience.
If they want to dig themselves out of this rut, they should establish themselves as high-quality, and update animal and family attractions for the next few years while they fix their broken parks. This way, by 2030, they are seen less as places for "cheap thrills" and more as places where a family can spend the day. So in a way, animal exhibits at BGT and family attractions for USO and SWSA are the way to go, but it shouldn't be their only priority.
Or, y'know, maybe it was just the weather.
Coming soon: Six Flags-United Parks merger?
@Velocicoasterfan - And see that's their whole issue. Their parks were very successful under AB when they filled the market between the "cheap thrills" of SF/CF and the fully immersive themed entertainment of Disney/Universal. However, I think everything went wrong when Sea World Orlando tried to go head to head with the big boys when they built Antarctica, which was the first trackless dark ride in Orlando (and might have been the first in the US, not sure on that). Sea World put tons of effort and money into the attraction and marketing it in what was a "slow year" for new offerings in Orlando (Transformers was the only other big ride that opened in 2013), and it still totally flopped. Many point to Blackfish as the trigger for the decline of the chain, and while that had a massive impact on the chain, I think the failure of Antarctica was the pivot point. Ever since that failure, the chain has constantly tried to limit risk and cut corners on new attractions in what seems more like a race with Six Flags to the bottom of the barrel instead of trying to hold their middle position in the theme park industry. The pandemic definitely hit the chain hard because of their lack of resilience, but if the chain had taken lessons from Antarctica to "stay in their lane", they would have probably been in a better spot when the world shut down.
Velocicoaster, they did have a point of difference, well at least Sea World did, but the world changed and they didn’t change with it.
This really saddens me because physically they are really great parks and I grew up going to them...but my god they are just ran so horribly. I've had some issues with my passes on my last two visits so I went to Guest Services to try and fix them, and both times the people on both the right and left of me were there to complaining that they felt ripped off because of the way the park was ran. The amount of attractions just randomly closed with no explanations or indications that they were going to be closed (especially BGT), the extremely slow operations, understaffing, and the nickel and diming is out of control. It's one thing to upcharge for the Sky Tower/Skyride (which is so absurd, if those are included at literally every other park, why an upcharge at SW/BG parks?), $4 mandatory lockers for an attraction with no loose articles allowed in the station. The Sky Tower at SWO finally re-opened after like a year of being SBNO and the entire spiel is all about upsells. "Buy a tour, add Aquatica to your ticket, go to Discovery Cove, buy an annual pass." So you have to pay extra to go on the ride just to listen to a bunch of upsells for the entire ride. The pay for their employees and management is a joke, the management is a revolving door and everyone leaves as soon as they can find something else. I noticed the director of operations job at BGT kept opening up like every few months for a while, so I made some phone calls to see what the pay was. Running hugely successful park like BGT is basically carnival pay.
The worst thing about this is they are not even struggling, they are making a lot of money (evidence: massive stock buybacks), they are just a**holes. For the first time in like 15 years I let my pass expire and don't have a plan on when i'm going next, has nothing to do with the price, i'd gladly go if they were just ran better.
i miss the days when AB owned them and i'm sure they do too. great operations, great staff, great special events and the best theme park food outside Dollywood/Silver Dollar City. and then multiple disasters struck starting when InBev bought them, shortly followed by the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau (in front of park guests) and then the Blackfish documentary. they have been on their heels ever since and whereas they have definitely tried to right the ship, with the exception of BGW, they just keep playing second or third fiddle in their crowded markets.
BGT is such a great park...
SeaWorld just has a different vibe now and I can't figure out why? No it's not Shamu...
Never been to BGW but I need to...
@Velocicoasterfan totally agree! I live 15 min from SWSD and didn’t renew my pass this year. I love the animals, but they’ve really cut back on shows and those experiences. And my husband would rather drive 3 hours for SFMM coasters than go on the ones there. They don't do coasters well, they’re just ok and they break down all the time on top of that. They should’ve never tried to appease the Blackfish crowd (other than stopping the whale breeding), who will never go there anyway. They’ve gone all in on the educational angle and completely abandoned the entertainment factor, even with the sea lions, which used to be the funniest show! I used to work there in 2007 and the company was run so much better back then.
I haven't been to a United property in a few years after I stopped renewing my pass due to a combination of poor operations and lack of compelling investment at my home park in the chain (SWSD), and honestly other than the parks in Florida I don't really care that much about returning to any of the chain's parks. The experience provided by the company has slipped considerably over the past several years, and I think all the cost cutting they've done in that time is coming back to bite them as guests are catching on that the parks are overpriced for what they offer. If this company wants to reverse course, they need to stop investing in buying back their stock and start investing in providing an experience worthy of their ticket prices (which have a gate price ~50% higher than Six Flags and even at their best go for 10+% more than the highest priced parks in that chain).
More Busch Bucks! More Friend for Free Tickets! More Free Samples! More Free Beer!
Want a good laugh? Check out the asking price at the ticket window to get into Aquatica as a walk-up guest.
I think in both cases what we have is a reluctance to take risks on the part of management. The safest bet for most parks is a big, new coaster. The problem: they can't afford one every other year, which is what it takes to keep attendance steady. Both Busch and United used to "fill in" with show productions. Not just song and dance, but things like the Batman Stunt Show, parades and so on. It was a good formula then and would work again. Until management realizes this and retains the services of show business professionals, they are going to have a tough time turning around these parks.
Antarctica was such a poor ride and experience. Whoever signed off on this ride should be no where near making decisions on new attractions.
However I do like Seaworld but delayed opening ride times is a real negative.
If a park has an opening time generally all the rides should be open during these times.
It feels like a complete rip-off if the ride is not opening until two hours or more after the park has opened.
The other thing Seaworld was doing was including a surcharge of 5 per cent on all sales.
Not sure if this is still the case, but again no reason to be doing this.
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The gist that I took from the presentation this morning was that United believes it is undervalued because its market cap is trading less than what it sees as the replacement value of its land and attractions.
Swanson said that the company has received sell-and-lease-back offers, which I dearly hope that United does not accept, since that has so often proven to be the kiss of death for other companies. United offered some industry comps to further make its case for undervaluation, but the most relevant one was with... Six Flags.
I don't know how compelling 'at least we're not Six Flags' is as an argument, but United is going with it.