Quarterly report: Epic Universe debut boosts Comcast theme park revenue

[Disney4me]

Revenue for the theme park segment of Comcast Corp. went up 18.9% in the second quarter after the opening of its Epic Universe in May, the company announced Thursday.

Its worldwide attractions’ revenue was $2.3 billion for the April-May-June period of 2025, up from $2.0 billion in 2024. Operating expenses for its parks were up 25.9%, too, but the adjusted EBITDA — a financial measure that looks at cash flow and disregards one-time factors — was 4.1% to the positive.

“We’re pleased with the early results as Epic is already driving higher per-cap[ita] spending and attendance across the entirety of Universal Orlando Resort, with strong food and merchandise sales and minimal impact on attendance at Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure,” Michael Cavanagh, president of Comcast, said in a conference call with market analysts Thursday morning.

Comcast, like other major theme-park operators, does not disclose attendance or financial performance results for individual parks or resorts. Epic Universe is “trending in line” with company expectations and its goal of making Universal Orlando Resort a weeklong destination, Cavanagh said.

NBC will air special about Epic Universe theme park

“Our near-term focus is on expanding ride throughput to reduce early attendance constraints,” he said.

Jason Armstrong, chief financial officer, said executives expect Epic to have higher attendance and spending in the future as well as improved operating leverage.

“More broadly, performance at our international parks remains strong,” Armstrong said. “However, we do continue to experience pressure in [Universal Studios] Hollywood, and we think it will be a couple more quarters until we lap that.”

Comcast officials recapped additional attractions in the works, including Universal Horror Unleashed, a year-round haunt set to debut in Las Vegas in mid-August, the Universal Kids Resort scheduled to open near Dallas in 2026 and a theme park in England, which has a targeted 2031 opening date.

“Obviously, we had substantial investments going to Epic. That was a big new launch. We’ll trail down off of that for, you know, call it a couple years,” Armstrong said. “We still have, obviously, a lot of investment going on in parks, including the smaller parks we’ve talked about that’ll sort of fill a little bit of the void. But, nonetheless, we’ll trend down for a couple of years, and then we’ll ramp back up as we approach the park in London.”

Last 2 houses of Horror Nights: ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s,’ WWE maze

The bulk of the conference call dealt with Comcast’s broadband pricing structure, the return of NBA games to NBC — along with their debut on Peacock streaming service — in fall and performance of the film studio and its live-action remake of “How to Train Your Dragon,” which has made more than $600 million in box office worldwide since its mid-June release.

Overall, Comcast reported revenue of $30.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025, a year-over-year increase of 2.1%.

dbevil@orlandosentinel.com

View the full article