Madrid, Monday, 1 September 2025.
Paramount accelerated its Europe play by signing multi‑park licensing deals with Parques Reunidos and Merlin, announced last Sunday, to fast-track Paramount‑branded lands and experiences across operator networks. The most striking development: Merlin will open the UK’s first dedicated PAW Patrol® land at Chessington in 2026, demonstrating Paramount’s tactic of leveraging preschool and family IP to shorten development cycles, lower creative risk, and drive cross‑park retail and F&B synergies. For operators, these partnerships offer standardized design assets and brand guidelines that can compress lead times and support lifecycle refresh planning tied to media schedules. The deals arrive as Parques Reunidos shifts focus toward Europe, signaling renewed competition for proven children’s franchises that may push licensing costs higher and require capacity and themed‑engineering tradeoffs. Retail and operations teams should prepare for integrated merchandising opportunities, tighter seasonality linked to content, and faster refresh cadences as media tie‑ins become central to guest acquisition strategies.
Deal snapshot and timing
Paramount has accelerated a Europe‑focused, location‑based entertainment push in 2025 through multi‑park licensing and development agreements with two major operators: Parques Reunidos and Merlin Entertainments. Parques Reunidos publicised a strategic partnership with Paramount on 17 April 2025 that frames a long‑term programme of Paramount‑branded areas and experiences across its portfolio, while Paramount’s own communications and career pages record related announcements dated 31 August 2025 — a weekend announcement that aligns with corporate outreach describing the expansion of Paramount IP into operator networks [1][3][4].
Merlin’s PAW Patrol land: scope and schedule
Merlin Entertainments confirmed a separate agreement with Paramount to develop the UK’s first dedicated PAW Patrol® land at Chessington World of Adventures Resort, explicitly planned to open in 2026 and to include four PAW Patrol‑themed rides, branded guest accommodation and customised retail offerings tied to the franchise [2]. Merlin frames the project as a deliberate strategy to broaden its family and pre‑school demographic reach by working with globally recognised IP owners, a rationale the company has used in previous partnerships such as its Minecraft collaboration [2].
Parques Reunidos: examples and operational intent
Parques Reunidos’ announcement sets the partnership as a mechanism to bring ‘immersive experiences’ and ‘Paramount characters and franchises’ into its parks; the company cites two early implementations tied to the collaboration — a ‘A Quiet Place’ Halloween maze at Movie Park Germany and a new Nickelodeon area at Mirabilandia, Italy — and describes the agreement as enabling the operator to ‘launch strategic projects in a more agile way’ under a long‑term cooperation with Paramount’s Global Experiences team [1].
What this means for retail, F&B and operations
Both press materials highlight integrated retail and accommodation components (Merlin for PAW Patrol at Chessington and Parques Reunidos’ Nickelodeon/Paramount areas), signalling a deliberate push to monetise IP across merchandising, food & beverage and lodging as part of land deployments — a model that centralises brand guidelines and design assets to deliver consistent guest-facing retail assortments and themed F&B concepts across parks [1][2]. Parques Reunidos explicitly ties the partnership to faster project launches, which operational teams can interpret as expectations for compressed design‑to‑opening schedules and pre‑packaged creative standards from Paramount’s Global Experiences group [1][2].
Industry implications and strategic trade‑offs
For the broader operator market, these multi‑park licensing deals renew competitive pressure for family and preschool IP in Europe: using established IP shortens creative risk and can accelerate guest acquisition, but may also concentrate demand for proven children’s franchises and exert upward pressure on licensing fees — an outcome plausibly likely though not specified in the sourced announcements [alert! ‘This is analytical inference beyond the explicit claims in the press releases and corporate pages’] [1][2][3][4]. Operators should expect planning trade‑offs around capacity, themed‑engineering schedules and lifecycle refresh cadences tied to media calendars; Parques Reunidos’ remarks about agility and Paramount’s stated global experiences framework underpin that operational logic but do not provide quantitative timelines or fee structures in the public materials [1][2].
Bronnen