Six Flags extends Peanuts licensing to 2030

Glad to hear

Whether or not Six keeps the licensing beyond 2030, it still feels like Peanuts is an IP that deserves a home. If Six were to let it go, and if I were Merlin/Legoland...I'd pick it up.

Glad to see this got renewed. With the money situation I was thinking this contract would be left to expire and the Looney Toons would be going to legacy Cedar Fair parks.

Peanuts and Snoopy have far more cultural relevance at this point than Looney Tunes. From Walmart, Hallmark, Macy's, and so many other retailers, you will find Snoopy and/or the Peanuts gang. Plus, the Peanuts specials at Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are simply iconic.

My next move would be to eliminate DC Comics/Looney Tunes from Fiesta Texas and introduce Snoopy & The Peanuts to the Texas market, keeping the Warner IP at SFoT. Getting Fiesta back to what Gaylord envisioned the park as being with music/live entertainment, food, culture, special events, etc. is the way to go with that park, taking a lesson from the Dollywood playbook. That park and the surrounding market, with SeaWorld being close by, has the potential to become a successful year-around experience if it were given the Dollywood/Knott's direction of design and planning. And yes, I would drop the Six Flags name from the park, simply calling it Fiesta Texas and if necessary, adding in small print "a Six Flags theme park." The Six Flags brand name is damaged at this point; the further they can take some parks with growth potential away from it the better success they will have at digging their way out of the giant hole they are in.

I wonder what the delta is between paying for 5 more years of the license or paying to retheme/purge everything Peanuts related in the parks?

dragonoffrost:

With the money situation I was thinking this contract would be left to expire and the Looney Toons would be going to legacy Cedar Fair parks.

People kept saying this, but I never saw any reason to think putting DC/Warner into the legacy Cedar Fair parks would have been cheaper (even leaving aside the need to retheme). Presumably, the contract for Looney Toons et al is for a fixed number of parks, or is priced on a per park basis. They’d have been paying additional licensing fees anyway.

Gunkey Monkey

My next move would be to eliminate DC Comics/Looney Tunes from Fiesta Texas and introduce Snoopy & The Peanuts to the Texas market

This - having diverse attractions and experiences increases your ability to appeal to different customers. Cedar Fair would have been better off to have Nickelodeon at Kings Island and Snoopy at Cedar Point. (I have no idea about what may have happened in negotiations- maybe they couldn’t get a deal that made sense.)

Maybe I am way off base here, but I have got to believe the IP for Peanuts is a lot less expensive than the IP for Looney Tunes

They probably renewed the licensing because it was cheaper to renew it than re-theme.

IMO this is a lackluster IP. Limited number of characters all look the same except the dog and the bird. Multiple rides are themed after the same character because of the lack of characters

Leave it to super7 to complain about…well, ****ing anything and everything.

Spooky Pinball managed to license enough Looney Tunes to fill a modern pinball machine, small run around 1000 games, and they didn't cost any more than their other games. I don't think LT stuff is any more expensive to license than any other semi-old kids' theme.

Super7 is holding out for Kristi Noemland where the kids’ area is a gravel pit.

I always thought and heard the following.

In 1998, when Premier Parks acquired the Six Flags chain from Time Warner, it also secured an expanded licensing deal for Warner Bros. characters.

The long-term license includes DC Comics characters, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, and Cartoon Network properties. The deal has been reported by some to expire in 2053, which would make it a 55-year agreement from its start in 1998. The specific terms and expiration date are not publicly released, but sources close to the company have cited this timeframe.

Also considering the popularity of certain Nick characters, Paramount (post-sale) licensing always knew what it had, and it wasn’t going to charge less then Peanuts.
And post closure of Orlando it probably realized it could get more from piece mail selling licenses, hence why at Circus, Circus, American Dream, and misc Hotels, Cruise lines, and international parks.

Peanuts themselves have built the brand far more fashion/clothing/retail forward then content, especially since the 90s, far more relevant then Looney Tunes.

If new SF wanted to really save money they would bring back the Berenstain Bears. ;)

What I want to know is how do these agreements even work? Is it one big flat fee and you can use the characters however you see fit, possibly costing them nothing to expand to additional parks, areas, rides, merch, etc? Or is it more of a framework that establishes additional fees that will be paid for each instance of additional use? Like a show costs this much, a piece of merch costs this much, a ride is this much, etc? Is it neither of those and the owners of Peanuts just get a percentage of merch sales related to the characters? Is it per park, etc?

Knowing how the agreements are structured would seem to be a key piece of information to try to guess what they will do with each IP in the future or even what makes sense to do with each IP. If it's a flat fee with no caps on usage, it might not make sense to keep both, unless they believe there is value in variety. But if they pay for each additional instance of use, maybe there's a way they can keep both for a long time.

Does anyone here have any knowledge of how these agreements are structured?

I'm glad they renewed them and didn't let the agreement due to money situation. Some people say keeping the agreement might be cheaper than retheming everything, but that assumes they actually would retheme anything. They could just sterilize it all and use no IP and the area would probably look like crap. Glad they didn't go that route. At least yet. It's probably how hard to quantify how much value an IP like Peanuts brings to the parks, but I guarantee they sell more merch with it than they would with no IP so it's not nothing.

My youngest niece and nephew (3 and 5) only know Looney Tunes due to Space Jam, which is occasionally watched. Peanuts on the other hand is absolutely beloved. Woodstock is my nephews favorite character (followed very closely by Snoopy,) the Blue Sky movie is his most watched movie by a long shot, the Great Pumpkin gets watched year long as well. He owns a bunch of Peanuts shirts that get chosen all the time. While my niece’s favorite character is Ariel (followed by Anna) Woodstock and Snoopy are definitely in her top 10, and I needed to buy her a Woodstock plush because she kept stealing her brothers.

Who knew Kinzel was playing such a long game?

As for kids and theme park characters, who from Looney Tunes does a kid want to hug? Bugs is kind of scary in appearance (and in attitude, in the cartoons). Daffy is just anger personified (perduckified?) Pepe le Pew? Ewwww. Elmer? Come on. Honestly, the Tasmanian Devil is probably the choice.

Snoopy and Woodstock? More huggable than that Florida rodent if you ask me.

Sylvester and Tweety get mobbed at Six Flags America and Great Adventure when I see them. Bugs does too.

But yes I see the same reactions to most of the Peanuts gang. And I've seen Franklin, PigPen and Schroeder in visits in the last year. All of which shocked me.

Forgot about Sylvester and Tweety. That makes sense.

Good on Cedar Fair/SF for including Franklin. I kind of can't imagine how PigPen works, though.

Spying SF executive checklist update:

More Shows
Less Hours during special events
License Snoopy & The Gang

Yes boss I licensed Kool and the Gang just like you said.