ORLANDO, Fla. — Some tough news is coming from one of the big Orlando theme parks.
SeaWorld reported that its third-quarter revenue is down 8 percent and attendance is down more than 5 percent.
It has sent its stock tumbling.
Huge drops in attendance led to sinking revenue and profit. Net income was down nearly 30 percent over the last three months.
It’s the second time in four months that a quarterly revenue report looked bad.
“A lot of things have been going on here. There's increased competition with new attractions at other theme parks,” said economist Dr. Sean Snaith.
Snaith, a business professor at the University of Central Florida, said SeaWorld has put some of the downturn off on Disney's new Mine Train or Harry Potter at Universal--even the weather.
Some have blamed the "Blackfish" documentary, which bashed SeaWorld and turned attention to the treatment of its whales.
“These things do over time tend to fade and they sort of drift out of the public's consciousness and in another year or two you'll know,” Snaith said. “Right now they're really just dealing with the fallout.”
But now SeaWorld is being sued by its own investors. Lawyers claim the documentary should have been blamed publicly for crashing stock prices.
The theme park’s bad economic news sent stock plummeting again.
“Sort of a piling on to SeaWorld--they were dealing with some other difficulties; now they've got this lawsuit,” Snaith said. “I mean, I don't know how far it will go and if SeaWorld will be culpable for something like the documentary, which they obviously had no control of its release.”
SeaWorld announced Wednesday that it's still moving forward with plans to open it's first international theme park somewhere in the Middle East.
WFTV
