strategic partnership

Dallas, Monday, 1 September 2025.
Merlin Entertainments is expanding its Peppa Pig footprint with a purpose-built theme park in the Dallas–Fort Worth market, a US second location designed to capture multigenerational family spend and increase dwell time through licensed children’s IP. The new US park—the third global Peppa Pig park and a $40 million site—pairs age‑appropriate rides, themed playscapes and certified autism‑friendly facilities to broaden accessibility and repeat visitation. Crucially, Merlin announced a strategic partnership with RWS Global to outsource high‑production live entertainment across multiple resorts, with RWS developing more than 100 experiences in 2025. For retail and park operators this signals a dual play: localised IP-driven attraction growth to boost merchandising and F&B revenue, combined with outsourced creative capacity to scale premium, seasonal programming and lift per‑capita spend. Practically, expect tighter integration between IP, live production and retail assortments—opening timing in 2025—creating new merchandising windows and operational models for third‑party services and licensing partners.

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.