The Case of Disney and Marvel
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Marvel Entertainment is a company which owes much of its success to its wildly popular comic book characters such as Iron Man, Spiderman and X-Men (along with close to 5,000 other characters in its arsenal). The company uses these characters in licensing through toys, video games and clothing, comic book publishing and film production operations to generate revenue which has made the company the #1 publisher of comic books with 40% of the market share in the industry. Walt Disney is a diversified mass media conglomerate that has five internal segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. It is the leader in the diversified entertainment industry controlling 85.86B of the market cap.
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The announcement that Disney would acquire Marvel took place on August 31, 2009. Robert Iger, President and CEO of Disney, noted that the “transaction combines Marvel's strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters…with Disney's creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories. In turn, Ike Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel noted "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," and "This is an opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world." To expand on the comments from both of the CEOs, I think that Disney was trying to capitalize on the fact that Marvel is very heavily geared towards the male segment, which Disney had difficulty tapping into. If you think back on