New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft interviewed his long-time friend and business associate Robert Iger, chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, at the October 5 meeting of the Boston College Chief Executives Club. Disney's market cap has grown from less than $50 billion to more than $150 billion in the 11 years Iger has led the company, noted Kraft.
I think the biggest thing that we’re trying to do now is figure out what technology’s role is in distributing the great content that we have. Because it’s one thing to be as fortunate as we are to have Disney and ABC and ESPN and Pixar and Marvel and Star Wars or Lucasfilm—fantastic. But in today’s world, it’s almost not enough to have all that stuff unless you have access to your consumer.
[Shanghai Disney Resort] is doing extremely well. We’ve not been particularly public about it yet, because it’s only been open since June, but the first 100 days were incredibly successful. Millions of people have already gone, and they’re staying for almost two hours longer … per visit than we had anticipated. So the guest satisfaction, which we measure in very granular ways, is very, very high.
It is interesting to consider a world where consumers have the ability to pick and choose what the [multi-channel TV] packages are that they subscribe to, and I think you’re ultimately going to get to a point where that authority shifts even more. Now, it could be that when it happens, consumers will ultimately opt for more [channels] versus less, but we’ll see.
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