Two weeks ago I asked whether summer had become the new shoulder season. Last week, Universal’s earnings confirmed it: summer is on sale, and the industry is betting the year on Halloween and Christmas. This week, the arms race that bet triggered came into full view with the fall roster.
Sony IP will appear at all five Howl-O-Scream parks, the first walkthrough licenses Sony has ever granted for a major Halloween event: I Know What You Did Last Summer at the three SeaWorlds and Anaconda at both Busch Gardens. Six of the ten houses at Halloween Horror Nights Orlando are licensed this year, including Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness. Epic Games is putting Fortnitemares into physical form as scare zones on both coasts. Jason Universe lands at three Six Flags parks. And in Hong Kong, pop superstar Jackson Wang is building a haunted house at Ocean Park based on a horror label he co-founded.
When Halloween has to carry the year, nobody can afford a flop. IP looks like insurance. That is the demand side of the story, but it’s only half of the story.
The Sellers Showed Up
The half nobody is talking about: the licensors want this at least as badly as the parks do.
License Global released its Top Global Licensors 2026 report this week. Licensed consumer products hit $338.33 billion in retail sales in 2025, up 10% in a year and 66% since 2020. Buried in the forecast section is the number that matters for our industry: 45% of brand owners named location-based entertainment, attractions, and live events a top category priority for the next 18 to 24 months. That puts physical experiences ahead of publishing, TV and streaming, and video games. Nearly half of the world’s biggest IP owners are actively shopping for what parks are buying.
The report also explains Sony’s timing. Sony Pictures Consumer Products ranks 47th on the list at an estimated $750 million, a rounding error next to Disney’s $63 billion or NBCUniversal’s $20 billion. When you are that far behind in consumer products, a five-park haunt deal is not a licensing afterthought. It is how you build the vertical. Jason Universe exists for the same reason. So does Epic pushing Fortnite into physical space. A haunted house is marketing that pays the licensor.
This is what makes 2026 different from every previous Halloween season: supply and demand surged at the same time. Parks need proven draws because fall is now load-bearing. Licensors need physical experiences because that is where fandom monetizes next. Both sides of the table are motivated, which means more deals, faster, at every chain, and less time spent asking whether each deal actually fits.
It Is Not Staying in October
The wars started at Halloween because Halloween is where the pressure is. They are not staying there.
Gaylord’s ICE! added Harry Potter, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas to its 2026 rotation, the first big licensed push into a Christmas walkthrough business that has run on original and traditional content since 2001. Minecraft characters arrive at Alton Towers. Cosm is putting IT into shared reality. Star Wars: The Experience opens as a standalone location-based product. The licensing land grab is moving across the whole seasonal calendar and into formats that did not exist three years ago. If you program seasonal events anywhere, in any season, this is now your negotiation environment.
The Jackson Wang Test
Every one of these deals should have to answer one question: what do this IP’s fans actually love, and does the experience deliver it?
Ocean Park looks like it pulled off a coup. Wang is one of the biggest stars in Asia, he grew up in Hong Kong going to Ocean Park’s Halloween event, and the haunted houses he attended there as a teenager inspired the horror label he co-founded. His Under the Castle brand has run Halloween activations in Shanghai, at Universal Studios Singapore, and in Bangkok. The homecoming story tells itself, and every outlet in Hong Kong will run it.
But Wang’s fans know him for his music, and the haunted house is built on the side project instead. Under the Castle is a niche comic-and-fashion label with modest traction. The Singapore haunt drew soft attendance, and the search data on the brand is thin. The people who love Jackson Wang want Jackson Wang, and mainland visitors deciding whether to cross to Hong Kong this fall are deciding based on him, not his comic book. Meanwhile, Ocean Park is shrinking the event around the license, cutting its haunted house count roughly from seven to four and trimming entertainment to pay for the marquee.
Now compare Ozzy at Halloween Horror Nights. The music is the IP. The thing fans love is the thing the house delivers. And it sits inside a ten-house event where Universal still funds four original concepts plus its anniversary icon house. Same strategy, opposite math.
Multiplier or Substitute
I went deeper on the United Parks budget question in this week’s Green Tagged: Insights, and the short version applies to every deal on this page. A license that expands the budget is a multiplier: it buys reach on top of an event that already works. A license paid for by shrinking the event is a substitute, and guests never came for a single house, particularly in this economy. When the smaller event underperforms, the license gets the blame, and the wrong lesson gets learned.
HHN is running the multiplier play. Ocean Park is running the substitute play. Howl-O-Scream will reveal which one United Parks chose the moment the gates open.
One more number from the License Global report worth sitting with: brand owners now name Gen Z their top target consumer, projected to hit 34% of purchasing power next year. Fortnite, a BookTok-inspired dark romance scare zone, a K-pop idol’s horror label: every major license this fall is a Gen Z reach play, and licensors are chasing exactly the audience parks need. Reach is real, and it is worth paying for. But reach gets a guest through the gate once. USJ’s R-18 original Zanzō and SeaWorld Orlando’s dark romance zone prove original concepts still land when they are funded and current. IP buys attention. The core product buys the second visit. The wars will be won by the operators who pay for both.
A version of this essay first appeared in the Seasonal Entertainment Source newsletter.
