GoKawiilLEGO's near-bankruptcy traced to Knudstorp's 2004 licensing overhaul
By the early 2000s LEGO had diversified into theme parks, an in-house game studio, clothing and TV content, and by 2003 it had lost nearly a third of its revenue in one year, reportedly coming within about 18 months of running out of cash. New CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, appointed in 2004, didn't scrap those ventures but restructured how LEGO ran them: selling majority ownership of its theme parks to Merlin Entertainments while retaining licensing rights, and closing its internal game studio in favor of licensing deals with outside developers, which produced titles like Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman.