Franchise & Trademark Royalty Ownership
The industry — Lessors of non-financial intangible assets (except copyrighted works)
Base industry report for 5331 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 554
- Under 10 employeesA
- 63%
- Establishments · USA
- 2,729
- Employment · USA
- 39,529
- Payroll · USA
- $5.3B
Of 554 Canadian establishments with employees, 63% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Structure decidesThe binding constraint is not executional. Being better than the incumbent does not, by itself, get you in — this one is cleared with capital, an asset, or a permission.
Come with the asset, or buy the business that owns it. Plant, fleet, land or quota decide this market before any operating skill does. Operators here are bought, not started.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 4
The binding constraint — capital intensity
Owning a trademark and collecting a percentage of someone else's sales is as light an operating business as exists, and the 554 Canadian establishments — mostly franchisor head offices, 453 of them under 20 staff — show it is a common one. But a royalty is a result, not a starting point: the franchisor's asset was built over years of running the underlying restaurants, oil-change bays or brokerages, which is a screen for those industries rather than this one. The only way to enter this code directly is to buy a royalty that already exists, and Diversified Royalty Corp. publishes the price. In June 2025 it paid US$36 million in cash for the Cheba Hut trademarks and licensed them back for US$4 million a year — nine times the initial royalty, an 11% starting yield — on a 50-year licence escalating at the greater of 3.5% or US CPI plus 1.5% [A]. After more than a decade of such purchases its whole portfolio of nine royalty streams produced $70.8M of revenue in 2025, with organic royalty growth of 4.1% [A]. So the ticket is tens of millions per brand, the seller is a franchisor with other financing options, and the buyer's edge is cost of capital — a listed vehicle paying out 88% of its cash as dividends will outbid a private entrant for any royalty worth owning. The IP-management software sold to this branch is screened separately at 533.
A trademark licence is granted over a country or larger territory and the franchisor's royalty is a share of system-wide sales, so the asset competes — for franchisees if it is a brand, for deals if it is a royalty buyer — nationally and across the border. Diversified Royalty's own portfolio now includes two US-based streams.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diversified Royalty Corp.TSX: DIVA | $71M | — | FY2025 revenue from nine royalty streams |
| Boston Pizza Royalties Income FundTSX: BPF.UNC | not disclosed | — | A single-brand royalty vehicle: it holds one system's trademarks and licenses them back. Its figures were not opened for this record |
| A&W Revenue Royalties Income Fund / Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp / The Keg Royalties Income Fund / SIR Royalty Income FundC | not disclosed | — | The rest of the Canadian single-brand royalty funds. All listed, all disclosing, none opened here — named because they are the other bidders' benchmark for what a royalty stream is worth |
| The franchisors themselvesA | not disclosed | — | Restaurant Brands International, MTY Food Group and the 554 Canadian head offices in this code. They are the sellers, and the reason there is so little to buy: a franchisor sells its royalty only when it wants the cash more than the stream |
Evidence
Evidence. Diversified Royalty Corp.'s figures were read from its own releases on GlobeNewswire: the 17 June 2025 Cheba Hut acquisition announcement and the 19 March 2026 fourth-quarter and year-end results [A]. The nine-times multiple and 11% yield are arithmetic on the stated price and royalty. Establishment counts are Statistics Canada (December 2023) and US County Business Patterns (2022) [A]. The limits: one buyer's one deal is a price point, not a market multiple, and DIV's royalties are top-line and structurally senior, which not every royalty is. The description of the establishments as mostly franchisor head offices is inference from the definition and the size bands, not a count. Patent licensing entities, which share this code, were not examined. That a listed royalty vehicle outbids a private entrant is analyst judgment, as is the cut factor. The competitive field names the other Canadian royalty vehicles from general knowledge of the TSX; none of their filings was opened for this record, so their scale is UNVERIFIED and they carry no figures here. That there is no roll-up buying franchisor head offices is an observation about the absence of one, not a sourced finding.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
'approximately 650 corporate members' (franchisors and suppliers) per its About page; runs the National Franchise Convention
Main US franchisor/franchisee/supplier association; annual IFA Convention; no member count stated on pages opened
CFA's magazine and online news for Canadian franchising
US trade publication covering franchisors, deals and franchise finance
Trade association for brand and trademark licensing; no member count stated on pages opened
Las Vegas trade show for brand licensing; page calls itself the world's largest brand licensing event
Global association of brand owners and trademark professionals; no member count stated on pages opened
Touring franchise-opportunity expo with Canadian dates in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and others plus US cities
Blue MauMau (bluemaumau.org), once the franchisee news forum, now serves a generic 'business insights' page and is dropped. IPIC (ipic.ca) is live but is for IP practitioners rather than trademark owners.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.