Elvis rights sold for €75.8m
Lisa Marie Presley today sold the rights to her father Elvis Presley’s estate for €75.8m, saying it was the best way to “preserve and protect his legacy”.
Under the deal Presley will keep the Graceland mansion, in Memphis, Tennessee, to which hundreds of thousands of Elvis fans make a pilgrimage every year.
But she no longer has the lucrative rights to the cash raised by the King’s songs.
In 2003 alone, the Presley estate made £23m (€33.5m).
Presley, the ex-wife of embattled pop star Michael Jackson, sold 85% of Elvis Presley Enterprises assets to businessman Robert Sillerman.
She will collect £27m (€39.4m) in cash and the rest will be split almost in half between preferred stock and debt repayments.
Presley – Elvis’ only daughter, who inherited the estate when her father died - said: “I feel confident that Bob Sillerman and his team are the right people to do this with.
“My greatest responsibility to my father is to preserve and protect his legacy, and this is an exciting new structure that opens up an incredible array of opportunities with a major infusion of new investment capital to do just that.”
Mr Sillerman, founder of promoter SFX Entertainment, is forming a new company, CKX Inc, to take over the business of the estate.
As well as the mansion in Memphis and its 13 acres of land, Presley will also keep most of her father’s personal belongings.
She also keeps a 15% stake in the company.
Graceland attracts more than 650,000 visitors a year.
Every August, thousands of fans flock to Graceland to remember the anniversary of his death there in 1977.
While Presley can keep the mansion, CKX will run the tourist business.
A statement announcing the move said the new company would own the rights to “the name, image and likeness of Elvis Presley, the operation of Graceland and the surrounding properties, as well as revenue derived from Elvis’s music, films and television specials”.
The statement announcing the move also revealed that the Elvis business had a revenue of £23m (€33.5m) in the year ending 2003 and nearly £20m (€29.2m) for the nine months to September 30, 2004.
