Comcast Corp.’s theme park revenue rose 18.7% in the third quarter, driven by the early months of operations at Epic Universe, the company reported Thursday.
Comcast’s Attractions division, which includes Universal Orlando and is part of its Content and Experiences division, generated $2.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Epic Universe Theme Park debuted on May 22nd.
“We’re really pleased with Epic’s early results that drive per-cap spend and attendance growth across Universal Orlando,” said Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong.
Officials said the new park is working as designed and makes the resort even more attractive to visitors throughout the week.
“The full resort in Orlando is very strong,” said Comcast President Mike Kavanaugh. He said there was less “cannibalization” than expected at Universal Orlando’s existing parks, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.
“Our focus right now is just driving capacity growth,” said Cavanagh, who will become the company’s co-CEO in January. “We’re very technologically advanced with our new park, so we’re working through the labor and issues to get it to full capacity.”
“We’ve been holding back a little bit to make sure the experience is what we want it to be, so we expect to fully scale up over the next few months. And we’ll really continue to drive attendance, per-cap growth, operating leverage improvement…over the next year and another year-plus,” he said.
Theme Parks’ adjusted EBITDA, a financial measure of profitability that excludes pre-tax, depreciation and other factors, increased 13.1% in the quarter. In other words, Epic’s operating costs exceeded its revenue.
Park attendance numbers have not been announced. Thursday’s conference call also did not mention the August opening of Universal Horror Unleashed, a year-round Las Vegas attraction, or the September incident in which an Epic Universe visitor died after riding the park’s Stardust Racers roller coaster.
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Executives spoke about Comcast’s broadband, wireless, streaming, movie studio and sports businesses. The company’s overall profit for the quarter was $31.2 billion, an increase of 2.7% from a year ago.
“Last week’s NBA Tipoff marked the start of the largest live sports event in our history and drew the largest crowd for an NBA opening doubleheader since 2010,” Cavanaugh said.
“We’re in the middle of the NFL and college football seasons, the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, NBA All-Star Weekend in February, and the World Cup on Telemundo in June,” he said. “Sports remains the cornerstone of our media business.”
dbevil@orlandosentinel.com
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