SeaWorld Orlando will flip to new owner After months of talks, Busch Entertainment will be sold to Blackstone Group for up to $2.7 billion

Shamu finally has a new owner.

After months of negotiations, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced Wednesday that it will sell SeaWorld Orlando's parent Busch Entertainment Corp. to the Blackstone Group for as much as $2.7billion.

Blackstone, the New York-based private-equity giant, will pay $2.3billion in cash plus give A-B InBev the right to participate in as much as $400million of its initial returns. Blackstone will own 100 percent of Busch.

The deal has sweeping implications both for Orlando and the global tourism industry.

Orlando-based Busch Entertainment is the second-busiest theme-park operator in the United States, with a chain of 10 theme parks that stretches from Pennsylvania to California and draws about 25million visitors a year. It has approximately 10,000 employees in Central Florida alone, where its properties include SeaWorld, Aquatica and Discovery Cove.

Blackstone, meanwhile, already holds a 50percent stake in Orlando's No.2 theme-park resort — and fierce SeaWorld competitor — Universal Orlando. The buyout firm also owns Merlin Entertainments Group, the British amusement-park operator with properties such as Legoland theme parks and Madame Tussauds wax museums.

'An exciting day'
Blackstone will retain Busch Entertainment's senior management and operate the company as a stand-alone investment.

"This is an exciting day in BEC history," Busch Entertainment President Jim Atchison said during an interview. Blackstone brings "an awful lot of strategic vision for us. We're going to continue to grow the business together."

Blackstone pledged to continue spending money on new attractions and other additions for the Busch properties, which also include SeaWorld parks in San Diego and San Antonio and Busch Gardens parks in Tampa and Williamsburg, Va. It also said it intends to give Busch Entertainment executives relatively free rein in day-to-day management.

"We have deep sector experience and look forward to working with the excellent BEC management team to continue to invest in and grow the company," Joseph Baratta, a senior managing director at Blackstone, said in a prepared statement.

With the deal, Busch Entertainment will for the first time become an independent company, rather than merely a division under the corporate umbrella of a beer conglomerate. Because of that, it will soon begin hiring to fill roles in areas such as legal, procurement and tax that had previously been handled by Anheuser-Busch.

"This is a big thing for Orlando, not just BEC," Atchison said. He said no jobs will be cut as part of the transaction.

Busch Entertainment will take on about $1.3billion in debt to finance the deal, according to a person familiar with the details. Blackstone is also contributing $1billion in equity.

Few changes likely
Visitors are likely to see few changes at the parks. The sale includes a sponsorship agreement with Anheuser-Busch that will permit Busch Entertainment to continue using names such as "Busch Gardens" and continue promotional campaigns such as the "Here's to the Heroes" program, in which members of the military can get free admission.

The parks will also continue to serve Anheuser-Busch beers.

Perhaps the most noticeable change: Budweiser's iconic Clydesdale horses will be removed from SeaWorld's in-park stables; Atchison said the horses will remain a part of Anheuser-Busch's beer-marketing division. Some Anheuser-Busch signs will also likely be taken down in coming weeks.

But beyond that, "I don't think guests will see a change," Atchison said. "There's going to be a lot of continuity."

Executives at Blackstone and InBev first began discussing a possible deal for the theme parks about 15months ago, according to a person familiar with the talks — even before Belgium-based InBev had completed its $52billion acquisition of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch. InBev executives wanted to use money raised by selling the parks — along with other noncore assets — to help pay down debt stemming from the merger.

Though other suitors are thought to have expressed interest in the Busch parks early on, the person familiar with the talks said A-B InBev had been negotiating exclusively with Blackstone for the past six months.

The negotiations were slowed by the collapse of the global credit markets last fall, which made multibillion-dollar transactions such as the Busch sale nearly impossible to finance. The difficult economic environment also clearly contributed to the $2.7billion price tag, which was substantially lower than the $4billion-plus that some analysts initially suggested Busch Entertainment could fetch.

The sale was also made tricky by Blackstone's desire to continue using the Busch name, which keeps one of A-B InBev's better-known brands intertwined with the parks even though the company itself no longer is.

"We're pleased to have reached an agreement with a buyer who understands the industry and will take a strategic approach to its future," said A-B InBev spokesman Michael Torres. The sale, he added, "met our criteria in terms of value, certainty and timing, among other factors."

Lengthy process
As rumors of a potential sale heightened in recent weeks, analysts speculated that Blackstone could ultimately seek to package Busch with Merlin ahead of an initial public offering or pair it with Universal Orlando — which it co-owns with NBC Universal — to create a more formidable competitor to Walt Disney World, the busiest U.S. theme-park operator.

But Blackstone says it does not intend to pursue any such combination; the firm noted that it bought Busch, Universal and Merlin out of separate investment funds with separate investors and interests.

The Busch Entertainment sale is likely to take several months to close.