Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

[Enter Valhalla]

The rebrand of Dungeons and Tussauds will be interesting. Those attractions are Merlin to the core.

 

[jon81uk]

The rebrand of Dungeons and Tussauds will be interesting. Those attractions are Merlin to the core.

There is no indication of a rebrand. Blackpool Tourism Ltd will operate them as franchises with support from Merlin Magic Making on new exhibits.

 

[GaryH]

I think Merlin are financially in the poo poo. Years of misman

Only renewed my Merlin Pass this week and now the only places I use it outside of the theme parks will no longer be valid from 1st January 2026.

Hadn't realised but Merlin had handed operating control of the Sandcastle back to Blackpool Council quite recently as well.

If you bought it online you should be able to cancel within 14 days

 

[JAperson]

Seems like something you would do when you are preparing to float. Or split the business up

I can't see them floating Merlin, especially as they not long took it private because they had less control over business (which all three current owners had large stakes in anyway). I do think however that splitting the business up isn't entirely of the cards, I don't think it's something that'll happen instantly but I could see them split into two different companies.
Structure would be something like
A business with a name like Lego attractions group - take all the LEGOLAND parks, LEGO discovery centre's and a the chunk of Merlin magic making that designs stuff for Lego parks. This part is the bit I assume Kirkbi would take, and I imagine is close, if not, 50% of profit out of Merlin.
And then perhaps the other part that may stay called Merlin or they may rename (bring back the Tussauds group name maybe?), I assume the other owners would take this part, perhaps bringing another owner onboard to help finance. This would be everything else.
This honestly wouldn't surprise me, and this shedding of loss making attractions and franchising names could all be part of a long term strategy to head in this direction.

 

[Ash]

Why would you want to buy the theme parks, isn’t the land under Alton, Chessington and Thorpe owned by a 3rd party?

A bit like buying a football club and not owning the ground. Utter madness.

 

[QTXAdsy]

A bit like buying a football club and not owning the ground. Utter madness.

With all due respect, it's the norm with ice hockey with the team renting ice time at a ice rink which I know sounds mad but there you go.

 

[rob666]

Why would you want to buy the theme parks, isn’t the land under Alton, Chessington and Thorpe owned by a 3rd party?

A bit like buying a football club and not owning the ground. Utter madness.

A bit like Wimbledon?
A lot of american football teams have jumped grounds as well, it happens, renting!
I think Tesco did very well out of renting early on as well, frees up capital for other things.

 

[Bowser]

A bit like Wimbledon?
A lot of american football teams have jumped grounds as well, it happens, renting!
I think Tesco did very well out of renting early on as well, frees up capital for other things.

Not to mention a good portion of the British population buy houses/flats etc that they lease the ground of.

 

[venny]

The difference is that most of those situations are part of the deal. You buy your property knowing it’s leasehold or you finance your new stadium in a similar way. Merlin used to own the freeholds to that land. They went to the trouble of actively pursuing selling it off to release capital and now operate on medium term leases.

Since they’ve already sold off that family silver, they seem to have needed to move to even more radical options to how generate more capital, ie the Sealife sell off.

 

[AT86]

I would imagine the 2019 buyout which added £2billion of new debt, doubling Merlin’s overall debt is likely more of a driver to them wanting to generate more capital than the Tussauds leaseback deal.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Since they’ve already sold off that family silver, they seem to have needed to move to even more radical options to how generate more capital, ie the Sealife sell off.

Sea-Life centres and Midway hub attractions were a Varney legacy and always a bit of a distraction, with Merlin themselves getting their start in aquariums and dungeons.

Varney famously challenged people to walk out of his midway attractions not having already bought tickets to visit the others in some sort of bundle deal. He saw the midways as the true profit spinners, with the resorts as handy anchors. A proliferation of many acceptable attractions, rather than a few dazzling ones. The reverse appears to be true for Merlin Entertainments now, they aspire to be a destinations company.

Attractions like The Bear Grylls Adventure are likely never to have turned a profit. In the actual case of Bear Grylls, it was built at the behest of Blackstone who had then recently acquired The NEC Group, to attempt to encourage day time, regular, family visits to the NEC. If it weren't for the pandemic, I'm sure that this offering would have been shored up by a small Sea-Life Centre and one other attraction on the same site. It is no coincidence that the Birmingham Legoland Discovery Centre, which also opened in 2018, was built into another NEC Group owned property (the NIA).

The Midways experiment is coming to an end. I don't know what is next. I'm hoping a focus on destinations and resorts, time will tell.