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Portaventura Being Sold Back to Universal? Rumour!

A new trademark has been filed in Europe a few days ago (with Spanish as a second language) under marketing services, theme parks & hotels
UNIVERSAL DESTINATIONS & EXPERIENCES
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curiouser and curiouser...
 
Jamesss said:
Yeah I really hope this happens. With all the recent reports of PA's operations being terrible, I haven't fancied going back there until it's sorted out.
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I wouldn't exactly call PA's bad ops a recent development. 😅 But I'd hope Universal implements some major changes on that front.
 
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Two things;

Universal stated in the Bloomberg release that they were now doing business in Spain;
https://twitter.com/x/status/1613235839097573376

The other is that next week, the Fitur 2023 International Tourism Fair will take place in Madrid. While I’ve not heard of anything from PortAventura or Universal’s end correlating to this, it is very plausible that we could expect an official announcement next week.
www.ifema.es

Fitur 2025 | International Tourism Fair

Welcome to Fitur. Enter the web to see first-hand all the details of this year's edition in IFEMA MADRID
www.ifema.es www.ifema.es
 
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It makes sense for them to purchase a ready-made park with an already good visitation and a 'good reputation'.

With them looking at dipping their toes into other projects now such as the new family park in Texas and the HHN attraction in Las Vegas, they could well be looking to diversify their portfolio and not rely so heavily on the American and Asian markets.

The copyright submission certainly makes for more tangible evidence...
 
Yes this has suddenly become a lot more interesting..

Makes complete sense too, a European Potter land is a license to print money.

I am assuming that they hold the theme park Potter rights in Europe too? Or does WB have them?

On the flip side this will kill any slim chance of the WB studio tour ever becoming a full Potter theme park.
 
If this does happen to be true - what do we think the long term plan is here? I can’t imagine Harry Potter and other IPs being in the main park, so would they add another gate? Do they have space for another gate? And the bigger question in my eyes is what happens to Ferrari Land? It is so out of place and so rubbish at the moment except the one main coaster - do they break down a wall and turn it into a part of Port Aventura? I’m so excited for if this is true but I do wonder with how different Universal Parks are to when Port Aventura was first owned by them, what would be the long-term development strategy.
 
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jbondpreston said:
If this does happen to be true - what do we think the long term plan is here? I can’t imagine Harry Potter and other IPs being in the main park, so would they add another gate? Do they have space for another gate? And the bigger question in my eyes is what happens to Ferrari Land? It is so out of place and so rubbish at the moment except the one main coaster - do they break down a wall and turn it into a part of Port Aventura? I’m so excited for if this is true but I do wonder with how different Universal Parks are to when Port Aventura was first owned by then, what would be the long-term development strategy.
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There is more than enough space to make a complete new park with IPs and still have space for a couple of big hotel resorts or yet another park.
7B5F4E0E-87D3-4F0C-BE62-2B6EEACA43E1.png Portaventura is the closest thing in Europe to universal. In fact, IOA was based on portaventura. I don’t think they would keep ferrari land as it is, I guess they can integrate that to the main park and rebrand, but who knows, maybe they just pay the licensing to ferrari. Time will tell but I’m sure that if this actually happens, a complete new park with Nintendo world, Harry Potter, etc. will be built.
 
JFranks said:
There is more than enough space to make a complete new park with IPs and still have space for a couple of big hotel resorts or yet another park.
View attachment 22612 Portaventura is the closest thing in Europe to universal. In fact, IOA was based on portaventura. I don’t think they would keep ferrari land as it is, I guess they can integrate that to the main park and rebrand, but who knows, maybe they just pay the licensing to ferrari. Time will tell but I’m sure that if this actually happens, a complete new park with Nintendo world, Harry Potter, etc. will be built.
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Interesting. I’m not fully aware of the full history of Port Aventura just a few odd bits. I think it would make most sense to do an Epic Universe style park next door with a bunch of IP’s (Nintendo, Harry Potter etc) and possibly combine Ferrari Land into Port Aventura (and possibly retheme it as I’m not sure it would fit in too well). I suppose time will tell..
 
JFranks said:
I don’t think they would keep ferrari land as it is, I guess they can integrate that to the main park and rebrand,
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Yes it is probably possible to rebrand Ferrari Land and combine it with the main park. But they have to go underneath the main hotel (PortAventura Hotel) for that, to make a connection between them. The only current connection between Ferrari Land and the main PortAventura park is right after the entrances of both parks, But they can use at least one more connecting path between both parts,
 
I mainly hope the buyout happens to prevent the whole La Liga crap from happening. I am, however, more than curious as to what will end up with Ferrari Land following the purchase. Will it be expanded? Will it become part of the main resort? Will it be rethemed? So many questions...

Also, does anyone know why Universal sold PA in the first place, cause I know they owned it at one point? Either way, I am more than excited to see the outcome of this.
 
CrashCoaster said:
I mainly hope the buyout happens to prevent the whole La Liga crap from happening. I am, however, more than curious as to what will end up with Ferrari Land following the purchase. Will it be expanded? Will it become part of the main resort? Will it be rethemed? So many questions...

Also, does anyone know why Universal sold PA in the first place, cause I know they owned it at one point? Either way, I am more than excited to see the outcome of this.
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As far as I´m concerned, universal sold PA due to internal restructuring and company crisis at the time, not because it had bad attendance. It certainly wasn't the best but they just didn't find it profitable enough to make it to the market. But now is another story. Disney is rising in Europe as well as other big parks, and Universal looks for 2 things: big bucks and winning competitors (Disney and Warner are "neighbors"), they can do those things by buying PortAventura. Just a new park with their IPs, a few fixes and improvements as well as new rides here and there for the main park, and a solid marketing campaign and they got a large part of the European industry as well.
 
CrashCoaster said:
Also, does anyone know why Universal sold PA in the first place, cause I know they owned it at one point?
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Vivendi (the company that owned Universal at the time) was heavily burdened by debt as a result of overexpansion and underperformance of various parts of their businesses, and combined with the Spanish theme park sector being in a freefall in the mid-2000s (Parque Warner and Terra Mitica were both tanking, and while PA was faring better, it wasn’t meeting Vivendi’s lofty expectations), PA was an easy asset to get rid of in order to earn some extra cash. Probably helped that they only had a plurality stake in the resort.

It’s much different nowadays when Comcast is in the process of rapidly expanding the Universal brand in order to beat Disney at their own game.
 
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Scott Lannigan said:
If Ferrari Land was to ever be rethemed and owned by Universal, I can seeing it being a very obvious option....fast and furious!

Would make sense, right? 🤔
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I could see this happening, but if they don’t want to have IPs in the main park and keep it as civilisations I see a couple of options in my mind. Either change the trains of red force to fast and furious and make it part of the park they build with IPs, and divide the rest of the park into Roman civilisation, part of the main park. I totally don’t see this happening as it’s very specific and I don’t even know if they would make a new park in the first place (which seems to me like the most obvious action to take). The other option would be to just keep it as Ferrari land and make it part of the IPs park. At the end of the day is a land just like epic universe lands don’t have much in common between each other (well yea, they are based in movies and stuff unlike Ferrari but you can kind of get the idea)
 
Is there much spare land available around Ferrari Land? If Universal want to keep PA basically as is with less IP stuff, I can see a heavy reworking and expansion to the second gate so they can still have a Universal Studios park in the resort. That said, with how the Studios parks now focus more on immersive-themed worlds, a new park like that may be pretty similar in style to PA anyway (though with more IPs ofc).

A less serious suggestion I have is to expand Ferrari Land into a separate gated Super Nintendo World, slapping an F-Zero theme on Red Force and painting it Captain Falcon Blue.
 
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