- ABC
- ESPN (80% stake)
- Touchstone Pictures
- Marvel
- Lucasfilm
- A&E (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
- The History Channel (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
- Lifetime (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
- Pixar
- Hollywood Records
- Vice Media (10% stake)
- Core Publishing
Besides these, there are also the more obvious companies: Disney television channels, Disney stores, Disney radio stations, and Disney parks (including Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort, Disneyland Paris, Disney Cruise Line, and a host of other vacation-related properties). Their parks and properties tend to be the corporation’s
biggest cash cows.
So just how many companies does Disney own? There are hundreds of individual companies under the umbrella of the Walt Disney Company, but what’s interesting and important is that the corporation has a hand in many other companies besides ones in which they have sole ownership.
WHAT DOES DISNEY OWN AS FAR AS RECOGNIZABLE BRANDS AND FILM FRANCHISES?
Disney-owned companies have characters and brands that are spread throughout mass media. Here’s just a sampling of a few of them:
- Star Wars
- The Muppets
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe (but not the X-Men — yet!)
- Disney Princesses/Princes (such as characters from Cinderella, Mulan, Frozen, Aladdin, and The Lion King)
- The Chronicles of Narnia Franchise
- The Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise
- Pixar Films (such as Toy Story, The Incredibles, and Cars)
- The Winnie the Pooh Franchise
- The Indiana Jones Franchise
- Grey’s Anatomy (and other popular ABC shows)
WHAT COMPANIES DOES DISNEY OWN THAT WE’VE NEVER HEARD OF?
Fold back the plastic layer of pleasantly drawn faces and great films, and you’ll find deeper layers, deeper cogs that hint at how the entire company ticks. Disney subsidiaries tend to fold oddly into each other, so here’s some that could fly under the radar:
- Maker Studios: It’s a production company for popular YouTube channels that has since been folded into other areas of the company after a troubled few years.
- Steamboat Ventures: It’s a venture capital company that invests in some of the Web’s top startups. For instance, the popular GoPro, Photobucket, and a host of Chinese social media and gaming companies have relationships with Disney through Steamboat Ventures.
- They also own dozens of miscellaneous property companies from Aulani to Port Canaveral, Florida. Many of these are leftover companies from when Walt had to hide his investments through other company names to buy land for Walt Disney World.
- International media networks like ATV, RTL 2, RDS, Tele 5, and Kividoo aren’t heard about here but are a big deal abroad.
- Earth Star Inc. is the company for private jets to cart Disney executives around! There’s also a management company called the Synergy Group.