Disney to cut 7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring

The streaming services part of the company is headquartered in New York, with media division employees in California.
ESPN is headquartered in Connecticut.
The parks division is split between Florida and California.

This is a list of the top Disney parks worldwide:

Disneyland Anaheim, California.
Walt Disney World, Orlando.
Disneyland Paris, France.
Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea, Japan.
Hong Kong Disneyland.
Shanghai Disney Resort, China.
Aulani -A Disney Resort & Spa, Hawaii.

Then there's also the Disney Cruise Line, which would probably fall under the parks division.

The happiest place on Earth for investors. For employees, not so much ...

I have no intention to ever step foot in Florida again ... unless it's a layover at the airport.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-world-replaces-250-tech-800303/

Same thing happened at my place of work. Over 200 IT employees were laid off and their compensation package was tied to training their replacements, all offshore. I don't blame the replacements, I blame the greedy executives.

I say if the company is doing so poorly that large layoffs are required, maybe it's the executives who need to be replaced...

executives need to experience the downside risk too

Our CEO creatively threw some mid-level managers under the bus, blamed the losses on a one-time accounting adjustment, and received stock options.

I could say that about three corporations I worked for.

It's good to be retired.

Sports is so increasingly focused on gambling now that I don't think it's a business they want to be in. Organizationally, they are going to want to refocus on getting back to making quality films and figuring out how to best market that product in the new post-pandemic streaming environment. Their first priority is going to be making Disney + solvent.

DeSantis is banking on the not wholly unreasonable supposition that Disney is too invested in Walt Disney World to do anything but shut up and deal with whatever policies he sees fit to put forth. In the short term, that's probably true. And the reality is that the leadership at Disney historically has been relatively politically conservative. However, Disney was in Florida before DeSantis and will be there after he is gone, and politics is a long game. I suspect Disney, corporately, will get more indirectly involved in PAC money to influence Florida politics. Failing that, I suspect that they may reconsider the long run prospects of further expansion of the Florida parks (they have 4 parks now and are thought to have room for at least 3 more). If the political climate in Florida continues to run badly for them, Louisiana (it was the first place Walt considered for Disney World), Texas, or Mexico could all be places Disney considers.

The other issue Disney may have to deal with is the two parks in China. Hong Kong made sense when people still believed in One nation/Two Systems, but now that Beijing has assimilated (or at least attempted) Hong Kong, and since Disney also built in Shanghai, they may have serious problems. My understanding is that Hong Kong became far less profitable after Shanghai opened (obviously both lost money during the pandemic). The deteriorating relations between the US and China also don't bode well for parks so readily identified with America.

Finally, big issues are starting to come along with Disney's copyrights. In the 90s I believe, Disney got the length of a copyright extended to 100 years. The 2020s are marking the beginning of the expirations of those copyrights, and that will accelerate in the 2030s. It seems unlikely that the feds will further extend copyrights, but I've been wrong before.

-Pixar
-20th/21st Century Fox (including the entire Star Wars franchise)
-Marvel (and it's entire franchise)
-Discovery/National Geographic
-Hulu

So they have quite a bit outside of their "broadcast" and "theme park" biz.

Aside from the cost of getting the rights to the games, producing sporting events is relatively cheap. And ESPN has a hand in all the big pro and college sports. As much as this is the square peg in the round circle, it might be worth too much to sell. I'm not sure who could actually buy ESPN.

But you are right that as gambling continues to grow that's what a sports network like ESPN is going to have to cater to. That doesn't seem like the Disney brand.

Considering 32,000 Disney Florida employed just REJECTED a contract offer two days ago.

96% of employees rejected the Disney offer.

So the employer announces thousands of layoffs?
Union busting 101.

https://www.wdwinfo.com/news-stories/new-contract-offer-rejected-by-walt-disney-world-workers/

..would find jobs elsewhere.

Sticking it to DeSatan and the FL R's would be sweet justice. Ain't gonna happen but one can dream, right?

And Fox News can go shove it up their ass too.