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A rare glimpse at Disney’s finances
June 30th, 2009, 4:35 pm · 24 Comments · posted by Adam Townsend, Staff Writer
Anaheim is banking on Disney’s local properties and their retail tenants in the city to gross an estimated $937 million from hotel lodgings and retail sales in the next fiscal year, which starts Wednesday.
Such financial success will help the city meet its annual operating budget, ensuring that Disney contributes an estimated $31.8 million in taxes to Anaheim in 2009-10, not including property tax and other fees levied against the resort.
Of that, $7.8 million would come from sales tax in Anaheim – largely from Disneyland, California Adventure and Downtown Disney — and $24 million from the so-called hotel bed tax in that city. Those revenues don’t include cash expected to come from the 250-room Grand Californian expansion slated to open this year.
In Anaheim, guests are charged 15 percent of their lodging bills for the hotel bed tax.
“(Disney) really is the baseline of the budget,” said Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle. “If we didn’t have Disneyland, Anaheim certainly wouldn’t have its vibrancy. I don’t believe there’d be a baseball team. I don’t believe we’d have all these entertainment venues.”
Pringle said that the other hotels in Anaheim, which contribute a huge amount of revenue to the city as well, probably wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for Disneyland.
”Some would argue, probably, all of it is related to Disney to some extent,” he said.
Megan Eagle, 18, and Collin Gray, 21, of Tehachapi were in Downtown Disney Tuesday meeting with a wedding planner and browsing the stores — they want to hold their upcoming marriage ceremony at the resort.
“I expected it to be a lot, but not that much,” said Eagle, a country club banquet server, when she heard about the cash Disney takes in. “I guess I can say I’m a proud contributor to that price.”
Not too long ago, Disney’s tax contributions were even higher than the projections for this upcoming year.
In recent years, the peak was in 2007-08, when Disney and its tenants raked in more than $1 billion in retail sales and hotel lodgings in the city, with $36.1 million going to the city’s coffers.
These figures are a rare glimpse into the financial details of Disney — an organization that strictly limits almost all financial disclosures to those the government forces them to publish as a publicly traded entity. But some numbers are buried in the city budget because the revenue is tied to a massive bond project.
By taking the disclosed city revenues and combining them with each year’s sales- and hotel-tax rates, the Register could figure out some gross revenues. The numbers only reflect a portion of Disney’s overall global revenue.
Though the resort is still collecting more money than it was five or six years ago, the decline in lodging revenue at the three hotels on Disney property has been dramatic. Their revenues grew as the economy reached a fever pitch leading up to the burst of the housing bubble.
In ‘05-06, the Disneyland Hotel, the Grand Californian and Paradise Pier grossed $164 million in lodging revenue; in ‘06-07, they grossed $172.9 million; in ‘07-08, the three grossed $185.8 million.
City budget documents show that Disney hotels in Anaheim will likely finish the 2008-09 fiscal year back at $172.2 million, while estimates suggest the hotels will finish 2009-10 grossing $160.2 million.
Anaheim Budget Director Blaze Bruney said that tourism throughout the city has been sluggish over the past couple of years.
Ticket sales for Disney parks aren’t taxed, so there is no way to figure out their attendance or ticket revenue from these public documents.
While Disney officials wouldn’t comment on the dollar figures, Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown did issue a statement:
“Here in Anaheim, where tourism drives the local economy, Disneyland Resort is proud to support the community in many significant ways,” she said.
Debbie Moreno, the city’s assistant finance director, said the Disney tax revenues have been recorded as separate items in budget documents since 1997. That’s when the city borrowed half a billion dollars from bond investors to make improvements to the resort area and the sprawling Anaheim Convention Center.
The city guaranteed those bonds against future revenue from Disney, among other revenue sources. As a condition to selling those bonds, the law requires the city to show the amount of tax money coming from Disney each year. The revenue has always, easily, surpassed the minimum requirement.
Disney and tenant retail-sales revenues:
- 2005-06: $835.7 million
- 2006-07: $796.1 million
- 2007-08: $817.7 million
- 2008-09: $830.9 million (projected)
- 2009-10: $776.8 million (proposed)
Disney hotels’ lodging revenues:
- 2005-06: $164 million
- 2006-07: $172.9 million
- 2007-08: $185.8 million
- 2008-09: $172.2 million (projected)
- 2009-10: $160.2 million (proposed)
– Seung Park contributed to this post
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Nice to see Mayor Pringle admit that Anaheim owes almost everything to Disneyland.
Can you imagine if Walt hadn’t built his park in Anaheim, or worse yet, somewhere not even in OC?
Without Disneyland, Anaheim would just be Stanton with better freeway access. It’s good of Mayor Pringle to lay out the huge amounts of money Disneyland Resort brings in to city coffers, not to mention the thousands of jobs created and untold happiness created by such a world-famous industry.
I think you need to redo your math.
http://corporate.disney.go.com/investors/quarterly_earnings/2008_q4.pdf
The numbers made public in Disney’s SEC filings lump all the resort revenue into one figure showing domestic earnings — so they include money brought in from Disney World, cruise ships, etc. These numbers are unique because they tell us how much some specific segments of Disney Parks and Resorts rake in Anaheim.
We went to Disneyland on Friday. I absolutely HATE Disneyland! I can’t emphasize that enough! I had to be dragged there by my girlfriend because my daughter is visiting for the summer, but it sucked! They are so greedy and don’t know how to treat their guests. They allow way too many people into the parks for it to even be remotely enjoyable. 90 minute waits for a ride, everything outrageously over priced, can’t even walk down Main Street without constantly bumping into people. I’ll take Magic Mountain or Knott’s Berry Farm any day over this Crappiest Place On Earth!
mexagain you can always go back to Mexico where everything sucks.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I was born and raised here, just like my parents AND grand parents, idiot
That’s why you don’t go in the summer. Smart people already know that.
@Troy
You are spot on man!
“I had to be dragged there by my girlfriend because my daughter is visiting for the summer, but it sucked! ”
You sound like you are a great dad. Why don’t you try Pharo’s Kingdom, isn’t that closer to lake elsinore? Probably cheaper to drive your lifted truck there too.
Yeah, I was gonna go there, but then I ran into your mom on Harbor and got sidetracked.
LMAO
BTW, I’ve taken my daughter to Knott’s, Legoland, Sea World, Disneyland, Pirate’s Adevnture Dinner Theater and other things in the month that she’s been here.
“These figures are a rare glimpse into the financial details of Disney — a very secretive organization that limits almost all financial disclosures to those the government forces them to publish four times a year as a publicly traded entity.”
geez Townsend… I know financial details are boring stuff, but there is no need to over-dramatize this. It’s a standard practice among most publicly-traded companies to limit their financial disclosures to the regulations set by the government.
I spent a lot of time as a business reporter back east before I started work at the Register. Though you’re right about standard practices, you can usually get company officials to give you some idea how the comany is doing — either percentage-wise or with a few specific numbers throughout the course of the year.
It seems to be the policy at Disney, however, to refer every last business question to the most recent SEC filing — a policy that can be mildly frustrating for reporters who focus almost exclusively on Disney.
Rare? Last time I checked, Disney is a public company, and files quarterly reports like everyone else.
Disney’s SEC filings are limited to 4 times a year, and they lump revenue from Anaheim holdings in with all the other billions of dollars generated by all Disney Parks and Resorts internationally. These numbers are unique because they offer a year-to-year record of the specific revenue for some of Disney’s Anaheim holdings, a level of specificity not touched on by Disney officials or securities documents.
Go Disney!!!!
If as Pringle says, Disneyland has made such a wonderful contribution to “Anaheim”, he should make clear that they have done so to the individuals on the City Council, their bureaucrats, their friends and benefactors.
Why has Pringle not addressed the vast difference between the taxes Disneyland *should* have generated for the City, as calculated by the data available, and the taxes actually collected by the City?
What real-world *benefit* to the residents of Anaheim can Pringle demonstrate?
Notice that “affordable” housing generates NOTHING for the City. Since the people who use “affordable” (which really means either taxpayers are paying for it, or the neighbors are paying for it) housing are dependent on hand-outs, they COST the City.
Glad Anaheim has Disney.
Yeah Disney!
If Disney generates so much money, why does the rest of the city look like a slum. Trash and weed filled streets. Strip malls that look like they are straight from Tijuana. Disgusting billboards that fill the skyline. It’s so sad what has become of the city.
Dear Judy - Apparently you haven’t driven State College Blvd. lately. All new landscaping, tons of trees and flowers, and not to ignored, the fabulous Muzeo and OC Symphony. This city has more public parks and open spaces than any other city in OC. Pardon our dust, as the saying goes . . . We are growing very fast. You really should widen your view, get out more . . .
Time for Disney to bail out California.
Agreed!!!!