Do you think Disney even cares about comic book sales?

bralinator

Most of this is strictly academic, but I have wondered just how big a slice of the pie are Marvel comics compared to the rest of Disney's properties?

Looking at Disney's 2014 annual report, Marvel is accounted for in only two of Disney's divisions. The "Studio Entertainment" division and the "Consumer Products" division. Obviously movies are different than comics, so the comics portion of sales would be accounted for in DIsney's "Consumer Products" division:



Of Disney's total sales of $49 billion, the "consumer products" division accounts for only 8.2% of that (and 10% of gross profits)



"Consumer products" includes much more than just comic books. It also includes action figures, dolls, board games, video games, music, lunchboxes, backpacks, t-shirts, toys, etc. So out of 8.2%, comics likely accounts for much, much less.

A search of Disney's 2015 annual report results in 37 instances of "Marvel" but only 6 mentions of "comic books." No data explicitly stated how much Disney had in comic book sales. Doing some web research (i.e. Google) you can find that total comic book industry sales were around $418 million (2012 figures). Marvel's percentage of that market was 39%. This would imply that Marvel's TOTAL comic book sales in 2012 was no more than $163 million. So, if in 2015 Marvel sold $200 million in comic books that would still only account for 0.4% of Disney's total revenue. Not 4%, 0.4%.

I don't think Disney really cares what Marvel does within the pages of their comic books. They just want to keep the licensed properties intact and able to make movies and merchandise out of them. Thoughts?

nweathington

Disney lets Marvel be Marvel from what I can tell. There may be some broad guidelines regarding "synergy" between the movie line and the comics, and I imagine Marvel has to show a certain amount of profit, but for the most part they seem to be pretty hands-off.

[Deleted User]

I think they regard the comics as the proving ground for the movies, tv shows, games, parks, etc. As long as they keep pumping out usable concepts and stories, the comics play a vital part of Marvel's entertainment catalog.

playdohsrepublic

I think that as long as it doesn't lose too much money and maintains a library of IPs they can exploit, then no Disney doesn't care about comic book sales. That's not the business they were even trying to be in.

mwhitt80

Disney cares. Marvel comics has budget and revenue goals just like ESPN, or ABC, or Pixar, or any of their other thousand companies. If Marvel Comics fails to meet those goals/budget Disney will make changes. Disney has shown that many times over (most recently with ESPN)

bralinator

It might be important to note that Marvel comics's publishing revenue is still quite a pittance compared to other areas of their output. For instance, The Avengers grossed over 3 times as much money ($623 million) as all of Marvel comics publishing earned the entire year in 2015 ($200 million). Not sure what kind of revenue goals they have to achieve other than: DON'T LOSE MONEY. We won't be able to calculate that until we know what their annual operating costs are.