Friday, March 6, 2009

Rumors Swirling Around Busch Entertainment


A-B InBev is still planning on selling the Busch Entertainment theme parks as part of their plan to reduce debt at the newly formed mega brewing company.

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that several companies have shown interest in possibly making a bid for the properties, including Merlin Entertainment and Parques Reunidos.

Rumors say that Disney is interested in some of the parks, but some also speculate that Six Flags wants in and that's pretty much financially impossible so I'm taking the names of interested parties being thrown around with a few pounds of salt.

You have to wonder how the tough credit market will affect anyone who tries to buy the parks, though.


3 comments:

Chris said...

I wonder if it would be in Six Flags's best interests to divest less profitable parks as they did with Astroworld-- and use that money to purchase Busch Gardens in Tampa. I'm sure the year round operation of the park, coupled with their Halloween themed event, would work out to be worth losing some smaller parks (SFA?) to make it possible. Unfortunately, the housing market makes land values very low relative to what they were worth only a few years ago, meaning that it would take either the sale of many parks, or some financial miracles for SF to gain the capital to buy the park. For that reason, I think the best shot of SF acquiring the park is an alliance with a venture capitalist, so that the park would be "Operated by Six Flags" and not outright owned by Six Flags.

ZyDeCoAsTeR ! said...

Astroworld was #7 in the chain of 38 when it was closed. It wasn't that the park was not profitable, it was a sideways attempt at reducing debt by selling the seemingly high profile real estate the park occupied.

The land sits unoccupied today, almost 4 years later.

Unknown said...

Mmmm, remember how HFEC nearly picked up 5 of the SF properties a couple of years ago? I don't think this would be out of their reach entirely...