Disney SWOT Analysis 2024 : Best Report With Infographics

Disney is the 47th company worldwide by market cap, but it is the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate. Comprehending its machinations and success is tough, but let’s run a SWOT analysis to ease the process.

Disney: Company Overview

In the early 1920s, Disney Bros. was born from the efforts of brothers Walt and Roy Disney in the back of a small office. In 1928, Disney’s iconic Mickey Mouse was created, and in 1937 it made over $12 million from releasing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Buying 51 acres of land with the profits, Disney threw itself into animated film production.

In 2022, the Walt Disney Company is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, with a market cap of $202.24 billion. The company is headquartered in Burbank, California, and has 220,000 employees.

Product & Services of Disney
ABC | ESPN | Television Programs | Motion pictures | Musical Recordings | Books | Magazines | Video Games | Toys | Apparel

Disney Competitors
Comcast | Paramount Global | Sony | Warner Media | CBS | Netflix | Viacom | Amazon Prime | Hulu

Did You Know?

Walt Disney used live animals as references for his animated movies, creating realistic motions and behavior.

Strengths – Disney SWOT Analysis

Largest Media Conglomerate: Disney is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The company owns 12 media giants, including ABC, Touchstone Pictures, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Hollywood Records, Fox Studios, and more. It’s also the distributor for many other studios, such as Studio Ghibli. Due to its monolithic existence, the company is immune to most changes.

Diversified Business: Disney has created an internal network of businesses that rely on each other for their operations. Besides media and entertainment companies, this conglomerate owns Buena Vista Construction, Hollywood Records. It’s a Laugh Production, GoPro, Photobucket, Palm Hospitality, and more. Disney is perfectly capable of operating and growing using its internal resources, making the conglomerate self-sustaining.

Powerful Image: Disney has a stellar reputation for producing high-quality content. In 2023, Disney was chosen as the most-admired media and entertainment company by Fortune for the 20th time. Fortune also ranks Disney as the 1st in innovation, people management, management quality, financial stability, and so on. Many viewers perceive Disney as the pinnacle of childhood entertainment, bearing fond memories of timeless joy.

Excellent Consumer Management: Disney’s theme parks’ 1st-time visitors have a 70% chance to come back due to excellent service. For its theme parks, Disney micromanages smells, sounds, colors, and employee interactions. Disney World has over 15,000 speakers to generate ambient sounds, proprietary machines to spread pleasant smells, helpful employees, and treats customers as VIPs. Even the technology is seamlessly integrated so that you don’t have to think about Wi-Fi, joining queues, or where you sit in a restaurant.

Large Viewership: Disney has a large, diverse viewer base across many of its platforms. In September 2022, National Geographic had 320 million views, Disney Channel had 162 million, Disney Junior 154 million, ESPN 76 million, and millions more from other channels. In 2022 Q4, Disney Plus had 164.2 million subscribers, and in 2020, over 44% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials used Disney Plus at least once a week. Disney owned 5,300 movie titles in 2021, and many have broken box office records with millions of views.

Weaknesses – Disney SWOT Analysis

Competing Against Itself: Disney may not suffer from market oversaturation, but the conglomerate has multiple companies that operate in the same market, causing it to compete with itself. Both Hulu and Disney Plus compete for the same consumers, and it’s the same for Plymouth, Wanderlust, SuperComm, One for All, J.B., and more.
With internal competition, office politics and sabotage are bound to happen, and competition won’t allow any company to reach its fullest potential. By competing with itself, Disney is lowering its revenue and reach.

Compromising For Viewership: In its attempts to gain Chinese viewership, Disney has compromised its moral values and character authenticity. Disney has removed, edited, or whitewashed many characters in Doctor Strange, Star Wars, Mulan, and more to pander to Chinese censorship and expectations. In its attempts, Disney has become unwilling to prove that it is not allowing human rights violations in its companies’ operations in Xinjiang. Despite 34% of shareholders showing concern on this matter, Disney didn’t budge and lowered its brand image and integrity to both investors and viewers.

Mismanaging Content Format: Although Hulu is one of the oldest media streaming platforms, Disney has not been able to use the experience to properly manage the Disney Plus series. Most of the series in Disney Plus consist of lengthy episodes that function as hour-long plotless extensions of the previous.
While shows such as Moon Knight have managed to gain acclaim, most others, such as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ms. Marvel, have had trouble due to this format. Producing long-form content meant for watching in a short period does not help the viewer’s experience.

Repeating Content: Disney has been publishing the same content in new packaging over the last few years. One of the methods it’s using to repurpose old movies is to make live-action versions of animated movies such as Mulan, Maleficent, Aladdin, and The Jungle Book. In the case of Marvel Studios, most movies follow the same progression and have similar plot devices. Repeating the same things in new formats makes easy money for Disney, but they have lowered the quality of their production drastically as a result.

Opportunities – Disney SWOT Analysis

Using Marvel’s Characters: Instead of remaking its old content, Disney can use Marvel’s thousands of available characters that are typically ignored to make new series and movies. Many of Marvel’s characters have fleshed-out storylines and connect to the Marvel universe in tangible, sensible ways. Using comic storylines, and even dialogues can reduce production costs and time drastically but create highly profitable content.

Expanding Into E-sports: Disney has attempted to create single-player video games for Marvel in the past but has not paid enough attention to the process to succeed. Instead of relying on microtransactions and sales, the company can instead make an online PvP game featuring its characters, like Super Smash Bros. from Nintendo, or Multiversus from Warner Brothers. This format can generate continuous revenue streams from microtransactions, battle passes, early access, and e-sports events.

Acquiring Smaller Competitors: Disney has acquired competitors such as Fox Studios for rights to Marvel’s mutant lineup. It is capable of acquiring smaller competitors that have the potential to become threats in the future. By doing so, Disney will save itself from future competition and gain access to more profitable content. Most importantly, it can acquire skilled and innovative minds through this method who can bring fresh ideas and perspectives.

Threats – Disney SWOT Analysis

Creating Preachy Content: Over the last few years, Disney has fallen victim to creating overly preachy content instead of simple entertainment or proper messages. Audiences and critics alike have complained that Disney content comes across as more of a nonsensical lesson than a quality entertainment product. Disney has doubled down on their perspective by rewriting characters to fit their agendas without caring about the essence of these characters. This move made to please a niche but more vocal demographic is irritating the larger viewership and risking Disney’s consumer base.

Piracy: Piracy has been the bane of Disney’s existence for a long time. The media giant has had multiple of its movies released the day before they are officially in theaters, thanks to pirates. Black Widow was one of Disney’s low-interest movies, yet it reportedly lost over $600 million in 2022 due to piracy. Over 20 million pirated copies caused this loss, and with time, Disney would lose more. Introducing Disney Plus has made piracy easier and more attractive to the masses and endangered its own business.

Creating Content For Niche Demographics: Disney has attempted to experiment with new styles and content for new audiences in recent years and produced content that is not appealing to a wider demographic. Ms. Marvel, for example, has gained attention from audiences of Indian, Black, Asian, and Hispanic ethnicity but failed to attract a large population. A notable reason for such failure is aiming it at a younger demographic and failing to market to them. Without refining the process of making innovative content and marketing, Disney can end up wasting money and losing interest.

[Bonus Infographic] SWOT Analysis of Disney

Recommendations for Disney

If Disney wishes to dominate the media and entertainment industry, it can try the following.

• Disney should pay more attention to creating higher-quality entertainment-based content, instead of trying to send a repetitive message.
• It should preserve the essence of its older characters and try not to rewrite plotlines completely.
• The media giant can use its access to National Geographic and other science-based channels to introduce more scientific accuracy and references in its media.
• It can create shorter-duration episodes for its series and make more episodes per season.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Final Words on Disney SWOT Analysis

It’s hard to grasp how impactful and gigantic Disney is, even with all the facts. However, the media giants have recently receded from creativity and resorted to mediocre repetitiveness. If Disney keeps this up, it will lose interest, its audience, and its shareholders.

References

• Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). The Walt Disney Company. Wikipedia.
• Acuna, K. (2020, May 16). Why Disney keeps remaking so many of its animated movies. Insider.
• Burchill, J. (2022, July 5). Disney’s Woke Crusade Has Gone Too Far | Opinion. Newsweek.
• Walt Disney (DIS) – Market capitalization. (n.d.). CompaniesMarketCap.
• Dufresne, A. (2022, January 4). Disney Loses $600 Million After Fans Pirate Marvel Film. Inside the Magic.
• Walt Disney. (2023, February 1). Fortune.
• Garcia, M. (2020, August 25). How Disney’s Live-Action Films Have Failed (And What Mulan Can Do Differently). CBR.
• Gass, Z. (2022, October 21). How Disney Ensnares Your Senses. Inside the Magic.
• Hallman, C. (n.d.). Every Company Disney Owns: A Map of Disney’s Worldwide Assets. TitleMax.
• Hern, A. (2021, October 2). Streaming was supposed to stop piracy. Now it is easier than ever. The Guardian.
• Disney: World’s Largest Media Company Becoming Even Stronger. (2021, August 16). Seeking Alpha.
• Lacsamana, P. (2020, February 25). 30 Disney Facts That Will Give You a Childlike Sense of Wonder. Best Life.
• Lisa, A. (2020, October 24). 25 Companies You Might Not Know Are Owned By Disney. Newsweek.
• Liu, N. (2022, September 8). It’s 2022 – Disney Needs to Make Up for Its “Stupid Mistake” With China. CBR.
• Mellor, J. (2022, August 4). Disney+ Doesn’t Understand the Difference Between TV Series and Movies. CBR.
• Miller, T. (2019, October 23). History of Disney: Timeline and Facts. The Street
• Morgan, B. (2020, January 23). 5 Lessons From Disney’s Magical Customer Experience. Forbes.
• Rapoza, K. (2022, March 11). Disney Forced To Face Activist Shareholder Inquiring About China. Forbes.
• Sherlock, B. (2021, September 2). 7 MCU Movies That Stick To The Marvel Formula (& 7 That Deviate From It). ScreenRant.
• Shevenock, S. (2020, November 12). Millennials and Generation Z Form the Bedrock of Disney+’s First-Year Success. Morning Consult.
• Smith, C. (2023, January 7). Disney Movie Facts, Figures and Statistics (203) | By the Numbers. Disney News.
• Smith, J. (2022, November 30). Bob Iger Confirms Disney Will Double Down On Woke Content: “We Can’t Lose That, We Just Can’t.” Bounding Into Comics.
• Stoll, J. (2022, November 9). Number of Disney Plus subscribers worldwide from 1st quarter 2020 to 4th quarter 2022. Statista.
• StudioBinder. (2018, September 30). What Companies Does Disney Own? The Colossal List. Studio Binder
• Tassi, P. (2022, June 18). Why ‘Ms. Marvel’ Viewership Is Reportedly Much Lower Than Other MCU Series. Forbes.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) – Financial Information. (n.d.). The Numbers.
• Whitlock, S. (2022, December 1). After Disney’s “Strange World” bombs, film critic says ‘go woke, go broke.’ New York Post.