For a valuation expert witness who spends months preparing a model, constructing evidence, defending assumptions, and explaining complex business structures to tribunals, few moments carry as much weight. It is not the measure of a personal “win,” because expert witnesses do not win or lose. Instead, it is confirmation that the tribunal recognized the reasoning, understood the structure, and found the analysis sufficiently credible and transparent to adopt it almost entirely.

That form of validation matters, particularly in the realm of high-profile property-tax appeals. Complex hospitality assets — major theme-park resorts, convention hotels, branded entertainment properties — are not valued the way warehouses, office buildings, and strip centers are valued. They require a deeper, more nuanced understanding of how revenue is generated, how intangible assets interact with physical ones, and how enterprise value must be separated from real-property value when the law requires it.

The Friday email was not about the reduction itself. It was about what the reduction represented: that a disciplined valuation structure aligned with the law, the market, and judicial expectations.

And that, increasingly, is exactly what courts across the country are demanding.

A property that was never just a property

The case behind that decision involved a large theme-park complex that looked unified from the outside — a carefully crafted destination blending entertainment, hospitality, retail, restaurants, and integrated guest experiences. To the visiting family, it was “the park.” To the assessor, it was a single income stream from a single property. The assessment reflected that assumption.

But from a valuation standpoint, the property was anything but singular. It was a layered, multi-entity enterprise with diverse revenue drivers and complex operational interdependencies. Revenue came from ticketing, hotel stays, specialty dining, branded merchandise, photo packages, proprietary entertainment technology, licensing partnerships, and character-based experiences. None of those revenue streams arose simply because land existed or a building stood on it. They arose because the business — the enterprise — existed.

When litigation counsel retained Bryan, the instruction was not to argue with the assessor but to reconstruct the valuation from the ground up. That reconstruction started with a going-concern perspective: what a real buyer would evaluate if they purchased the entire operation. From there, the analysis peeled away the components that statutory law and decades of case law classify as non-taxable.

This involved identifying the tangible personal property — from ride systems to show effects to specialty equipment — and valuing it separately. It required isolating the identifiable intangible assets: brand, licensing structures, merchandising engines, management expertise, specialized software, workforce organization, and intellectual property embedded in the guest experience. It required quantifying working capital and removing revenue streams unrelated to the real estate.

Only after all of these factors were removed did the valuation arrive at a real-property value consistent with statutory requirements.

When the appeals board issued its findings, it adopted nearly the entire structure. The board recognized that a very large portion of the theme park’s total value represented intangible assets and working capital — value that could not legally be taxed. The board’s conclusions mirrored the expert witness’s segmentation almost line for line. For a complex asset of this scale, that level of judicial alignment signals a deeper shift: courts are no longer interested in broad strokes. They expect a bridge between business and property that can withstand scrutiny.

Where the market and the law meet

The board’s decision illuminated what many assessors still overlook: the income of a hospitality enterprise cannot be imputed wholesale to the real estate. Markets do not behave that way. Buyers do not behave that way. Courts, increasingly, do not accept valuations that behave that way.

The theme-park ruling was not an outlier. It was part of a modern line of cases redefining how assessors, attorneys, and expert witnesses must approach valuation in the 2020s.

The case law that quietly reshaped the country

Across the past decade, several key appellate decisions have transformed how courts view complex-property valuations. While these decisions often arise in states with large hospitality economies, their logic does not stay contained. Appellate panels in other regions read the reasoning, absorb the analytical framework, and, in many cases, borrow the language.

The shift began when courts started to focus less on numbers and more on methodology — less on the final value and more on whether the expert could clearly separate taxable from non-taxable components.

The legal trend is unmistakable:
Courts now demand segmentation. Courts now require transparency. Courts no longer tolerate valuation shortcuts.

The end of “just subtract the fees”.

Not long ago, many assessors relied on a fee-deduction shortcut in which management and franchise fees were simply subtracted from hotel income before capitalizing the result. These deductions, they argued, removed intangible value from the assessment.

But courts have dismantled that theory.

Multiple appellate decisions have held clearly that:

• Fees are expenses, not assets.
• Subtracting a fee does not remove the value of the underlying intangible.
• Intangible assets must be explicitly identified and valued.
• This principle now permeates judicial reasoning across states, even when not cited by name.

Why workforce matters everywhere

Courts have increasingly recognized “workforce in place” not as a vague idea but as an identifiable intangible asset. In complex hospitality environments, trained labor is not incidental — it is foundational. A hotel or theme park without workforce in place is functionally inoperable.

Valuation models that fail to isolate this asset — or pretend it magically “comes with the building” — increasingly fail under scrutiny.

Gray areas clarified

Recent rulings have also addressed nuanced questions like whether certain incentives, rebates, or participation payments are tied to the beneficial use of property or to enterprise-level operations. Even in cases where some payments have been permitted as real-property income, courts have consistently reaffirmed that enterprise assets such as brand, management rights, and business systems must be valued and excluded.

These decisions reinforce a national trend: the courts want valuations to reflect actual economic behavior, not assumptions or generalized accounting.

The stadium frontier: the billion-dollar question

If hotels embody the modern challenge of intangible-heavy valuation, stadiums embody its future.

Stadium revenue structures hinge on naming rights, broadcast agreements, sponsorships, premium seating licenses, and experiential partnerships. These assets carry extraordinary value — but they are not real property.

The naming-rights deal for SoFi Stadium is often cited as an example: widely reported to exceed 30 million dollars annually over two decades. This value derives from marketing exposure, digital reach, athlete associations, audience demographics, and media visibility. It is intangible, contractual, and independent of the physical facility.

Yet the scale of the number invites assessment interest.

In Santa Clara County, the assessor attempted to treat the naming-rights agreement and certain sponsorship deals at Levi’s Stadium as part of a taxable possessory interest. This strategy argued that exclusive commercial rights attached to the stadium created a real-property benefit subject to taxation.

The approach is bold — and fragile

It blurs enterprise value and real-property value in ways courts have repeatedly rejected.

Nevertheless, these disputes are instructive. They highlight how high-value intangible rights tempt assessors to stretch traditional boundaries. As naming-rights deals become larger and more complex, more stadium appeals will probe the edges of possessory-interest doctrine. And what happens in these stadium cases will inevitably influence hospitality appeals.

The logic is identical:
Which income streams belong to the business, and which belong to the land and improvements?
Courts increasingly expect expert witnesses to answer that question with clarity.

Assessment models under strain

The challenge is not that assessors lack expertise; it is that many assessment systems were designed decades ago for a different economy. They work well for warehouses, apartments, and many retail properties. But they are poorly equipped for assets where the majority of value is intangible.

In litigation settings, this mismatch becomes apparent. Assessment models often show the same weaknesses:

• They assume all income belongs to the real estate.
• They include intangible revenue in the projected NOI.
• They omit the value of personal property.
• They treat digital systems, brand value, and operational platforms as inherent to the building.
• They rely on legacy methods incompatible with modern case law.
• Occasionally, an assessor will admit, under oath, that they were “not able to allocate between tangible and intangible income streams.” This single sentence is often enough to shift the weight of the case.

Tribunals are increasingly unwilling to accept assessments built on undifferentiated income, especially when the taxpayer provides a segmented model grounded in market behavior and legal precedent.

When the tribunal starts listening

In hearings involving complex properties, there is almost always a moment when the tribunal begins to understand the structure of the valuation. It rarely comes from a dramatic demonstration. Instead, it comes from clarity — a precise explanation of how a buyer would view the property, how enterprise assets drive income, and where the law draws the boundary between taxable and non-taxable value.

In the theme-park case, that moment occurred when the expert witness explained business enterprise value not as jargon but as a market reality. Buyers pay for the enterprise. They then allocate value to real property, personal property, intangibles, and working capital. They do not conflate the business with the land.

That explanation resonated. The tribunal’s body language changed. Questions shifted. The narrative clicked.

Expert testimony is not about persuasion; it is about illumination. And when a tribunal adopts an expert’s structure, it is because the presentation made the asset’s economics understandable in legal terms.

This is why judicial validation feels meaningful to seasoned expert witnesses — because it confirms that they translated complexity into clarity.

Where 2026 is taking us

The future of hospitality and stadium valuation will be shaped by three converging trends.

1. Intangible assets are increasingly dominating enterprise value.
   Modern hotels and stadiums rely on brand platforms, digital ecosystems, AI-enabled pricing, loyalty programs, sponsorship frameworks, and labor infrastructure. Their cash flows increasingly originate from assets that are legally non-taxable.
2. Assessors are under pressure to explore new theories. Naming rights, digital revenue streams, and experiential licensing deals are tempting targets. Some assessors attempt to treat these as taxable interests despite long-standing limitations in property-tax law.
3. Tribunals are raising their expectations.

Courts have made clear that complex properties require segmentation, transparency, and asset-specific analysis. A model that cannot distinguish enterprise value from real-property value is unlikely to survive appeal.

These forces mean that expert witnesses and attorneys must work more closely than ever. Complex assets require legal structure and valuation structure in equal measure. The most successful appeals occur when both disciplines move in concert — presenting a unified explanation of what belongs in the tax base and what does not.

This is no longer optional. It is the new standard.

The closing truth: clarity Is the currency

Expert witnesses remain impartial. Their duty is to the tribunal, not to a client or a preferred outcome. But property-tax appeals involving complex assets are demanding environments. They involve rigorous scrutiny, adversarial testing, and the necessity of translating business models into statutory language.

When a tribunal adopts an expert’s findings nearly verbatim — when it says the conclusions are “entitled to substantial weight” — it acknowledges not advocacy but integrity. It affirms that the valuation respected the law, the market, and the evidence.

As hotels, resorts, theme parks, and stadiums continue to evolve into intangible-heavy enterprises, clarity will become the most valuable contribution an expert witness can offer. Courts do not reward simplification. They reward understanding.

Looking under the hood of these appeals reveals a simple reality:

The future of property-tax litigation belongs to those who can explain complex assets in a way that courts can trust.