Billund, Wednesday, 24 September 2025.
On Wednesday the LEGO Group agreed to buy 29 LEGO and LEGOLAND Discovery Centres from Merlin Entertainments for about £200 million, bringing roughly five million annual visitors and indoor experiential retail under LEGO’s direct control. For retail professionals, the most intriguing fact is that LEGO is not buying locations for real estate alone but to unify brand experience, merchandising and guest data across owned physical touchpoints—moving from licence-driven operations to fully integrated customer capture and loyalty potential. Expect near-term integration work on ticketing, POS, retail assortments and CRM, plus regional management shifts and staffing changes; Merlin retains larger parks under licence, freeing capital for its core scale projects. This move sets a precedent for IP owners repatriating experience-driven retail to protect standards and first-party data. The acquisition, closing around the end of the year, signals that experiential venues are now strategic retail channels where control over experience and data increasingly defines valuation and future licensing models.