Media & entertainment
The crowd is the easy part: movie studios and theaters, game publishers, trading cards, nightclubs, haunted houses, amusement parks, and football clubs. The Modern MBA episodes on all of it, in writing, following who actually gets paid.
13 case studies
Case study — Media & entertainmentHow much a haunted house actually makesA haunted house has six weekends a year to make its money back. The good ones out-earn Disney Parks on margin.12 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy movie theaters survive off popcornTheaters keep less than half your ticket and lose money on the film. The popcorn is not a joke, it is the plan.10 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentHow much nightcrawlers actually get paidLocal news cut the night shift and kept the footage. The freelancers who replaced it carry every cost and get a watermark.11 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy there’s no money in making moviesThe Big Five survive flops because movies are one line item in a conglomerate. Lionsgate had nothing to fall back on.14 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy arcades never actually diedConsoles killed the arcade market. They did not kill the arcade business — it just stopped being about games.14 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy regional amusement parks are dyingA decade of growth moved the average ticket from $21.26 to $24.86, and in-park spend by about a dollar.13 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy Pokemon cards are worth so much moneyA piece of cardboard printed in 1999 sold for $420,000. What sets the price is not rarity or nostalgia.11 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy free content never became a businessBuzzFeed's advertising revenue has never once covered what it costs to make the content. That is the whole story.13 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy esports collapsed and who got paid for itThe audience never left. The money still vanished. That makes this a story about who was selling, not about fans.16 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy Xbox lost the console warsFrom defining a console generation to a distant third twice running, and the cause was never the hardware.10 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy video games launch unfinishedSquare Enix went all-in on live service and wrote down $105 million. Take-Two did it properly. The difference is the case.9 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentWhy football clubs never make moneyBarcelona spends 80–90% of everything it earns on player wages. It has done for eight straight seasons.12 min read
Case study — Media & entertainmentHow nightclubs and club promoters make moneyA club has to look packed before it is packed. The people who manufacture that are not on the payroll.8 min read