For the Love of Live Entertainment

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1:58derivatives which could increase risks and volatility. Monthly income is not guaranteed. Prepare by BlackRock Investments, LLC. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Carol, do you remember a couple weeks ago we spoke about the Tiger Global alum? His firm is betting on prying people off their screens. Yes. Money goes to travel, live events, fitness, or spectator sports. Right. And he's thinking about that in terms of investment plays. Yeah. That's what he's focused on. Yeah. So live events, definitely our next guest focus.

2:33Our company's behind the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. Monster Jam. Also Disney on Ice. Monster Energy. I don't even know all of these things. AMA Supercross. And the Super Motocross World Championship. Vroom, vroom. Come on, Carol. Says the dad of a little boy. We're talking about Feld Entertainment's family-owned and operated. Here with us now is Juliet Feld Grossman, CEO of Feld Entertainment. She joins us from Florida. Julie, welcome. Good to have you on the program. Multiple events, 80 countries, six continents. You've got a great view of the consumer. How's business?

3:07Juliette Feld Grossman:Thanks so much for having me on. So as you mentioned, we represent a number of different properties. Ringling Brothers, Barn Bailey Circus, Monster Jam, Super Motocross, and Disney on Ice. And across all of those properties, we do about 2 ,800 performances per year in 240 cities, performing to about 14 million audience members. And so we obviously see the economy from a lot of different vantage points, and we are in many different territories worldwide. I can tell you what we're seeing right now in the U.S. is really a tale of two economies, which is playing out across a number of other industries as well.

3:50Juliette Feld Grossman:So we see the affluent consumer who's excited to spend on VIP experiences, on merchandise, all of the plussing up they can get. And then, of course, we see lower middle income consumers having a harder time, less discretionary income due to other costs. in their lives. And so our focus is always on a very wide and diverse economic spectrum. So we put a lot of effort into reaching across that spectrum to customers and offering a variety of price points and reaching them through different marketing strategies to let them know that we're here and that we have all those options available. So who do you think your customer is?

4:36And I'm I'm looking like at Barnum Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus tickets for the Barclays Center in 2026. And I'm just kind of scrolling up right now. I'm at tickets that are 95, 99. Are you at a reseller, Carol? Or are you going directly? I'm at eventticketscenter.com. Is that a reseller?

4:57Juliette Feld Grossman:Well, we hope you'll buy direct. That is a reseller. All right. So talk to us about your pricing here. All right. I'm going to your site. Sorry. Google took me to the wrong place. I'm blaming Google here. So in the venue, we've got thousands of seats. So based on, you know, how close you are, what position you are, you know, inside the venue, we offer different pricing. And in some cases, we may also have different experiences connected to, you know, different price tickets. And so why we have, you know, front row tickets at a higher price point. We also have tickets that are higher up in the venue at more affordable ticket prices.

5:40Juliette Feld Grossman:But what I will say is, you know, somebody who's been producing these shows for many years now, we always look to say, how can we make sure we have a great experience for everybody who comes to our shows? So we look at the quality of the production from many different vantage points as we're developing it so that no matter where you sit, you and your family have that great experience you take home those memories and and hopefully you come back many more times so in terms of the portfolio that you have we're showing a lot of footage from ringling brothers and barnum and bailey right now but you also do disney on ice you do motocross events monster truck stuff the portfolio in terms of where revenue comes from how is it divided well we have many different tours so by volume we have eight tours of disney on ice that travel globally.

6:29Juliette Feld Grossman:We have five tours of Monster Jam. We have one tour of Super Motocross at 31 events across the season that is also broadcast live. And then we have one tour of Ringling Brothers, Farm and Bailey. But we're very diversified in terms of our consumer touch points. So we also have a merchandise business that accompanies all of our tours. We have a very strong licensing program across our owned properties. We also have media and broadcast rights associated with some of our properties too. We're Bloomberg, so we love numbers, but you're a private family-held company. Can you just give us an idea of size of revenue in 2025 or 2024, for example?

7:12Juliette Feld Grossman:We are privately held, so we don't disclose that information. Is it growing? Yes, it is growing. And one of the things that we've strategically been working on is, you know, we've been a company and a business that's about that special day, that day you get to come to our event. And now we're increasingly working on building that 365-day presence with our customers, building out a more franchise-oriented strategy. So with Monster Jam, we, since 2020, we've been the number one vehicle license worldwide. That's according to Surkana. And so we have a very robust retail program with Walmart, Target, Amazon, not only in the U.S., but globally.

7:56Juliette Feld Grossman:With Super Motocross, we are on NBC and Peacock with our live broadcast. We also have a video pass that goes to over 140 countries, and that's a subscription. So we have a lot of different ways in which we're reaching consumers. We're building out those touch points so that we continue to stay with them all year round and be top of mind. I'm curious, your portfolio, how do you expand it? What would you like to add to it? Well, we're always looking at new opportunities. We continue to look at new IP because we are both a property owner and then we also license. And then we're also looking at new ways of growing along with the relaunch of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey in 2023.

8:43Juliette Feld Grossman:This fall we launched a Ringling Kids channel so we're developing premium kids content and a slate of characters that are introducing the circus arts and a lot of humor and circus talent into into families and so we're looking there at building out you know more retail product line we're building out media partnerships around that and so we look at expanding our reach in that way. And with Monster Jam as well, we have a number of media opportunities underway and we're excited to be growing not only our number of properties, but also the ways in which we're connecting with consumers and the monetization of those channels.

9:24Hey, on the circus side of things, you've produced the circus for years. I've always wondered where you find these performers and how you find these performers. Is it is it is thinking about Juliet, you know, if this gig doesn't work out? Yeah, that's how flexible are you? Yeah, that ship has sailed. Not flexible enough. But, you know, is it like this is the major leagues are the farm teams, the regional stuff all over the world. And you basically have scouts go and you find them that way.

9:55Juliette Feld Grossman:We have an in-house casting and talent team who travel all over the world and they're visiting circus festivals. They're visiting schools. They're also in touch with a network of coaches and families and talent that they know. So we are sometimes looking at, you know, acts that are already developed and created, but we're often creating our own acts based on ideas we have for something that, you know, the audience has never seen before. What we always want to do is surprise people and bring them something that they haven't seen in a really new and exciting way. So with this new production of Ringling Brothers, we are so excited.

10:35Juliette Feld Grossman:We have a bike troupe from China that has never been to the U.S. before, and they're doing incredible acrobatics on bikes, including at the very end of the performance, they have about 10 people riding on bicycles, and then one performer who runs across the backs of all the people on the bicycles. It is unbelievable. It has never been performed. I did go to an amazing circus in China. Okay, I love that. I was going to say, Juliette, you know, Tim does ride bikes, so I'm just saying. Not on a high wire or anything. Hey, on a serious note, you know, I think about circuses and acrobats and performers and different things.

11:15And a lot of times it comes from, you know, individuals who are from outside the United States. Immigration. How have you been impacted by immigration?

11:26Juliette Feld Grossman:We are fortunate. We have a very good team here who work on immigration, but we have performers from 17 different countries, and it is quite challenging. So we do work very far ahead of time to ensure we can bring our performers in. And sometimes there are challenges in doing that. This time we were fortunate that we were able to bring in everybody that we wanted to be a part of this show. But I can tell you in our last production we had a group of male comedians who are from the Ukraine and we actually had to get a special notice from the Ukrainian Department of Defense to allow them to be a part of Ringling because they were not part of military service then.

12:15Juliette Feld Grossman:So we worked very hard to work to bring the best performers here And I think that's something that really makes us stand out because we have this infrastructure to support what we're doing. We can bring in the best performers. We have a lot of experience and a lot of credibility as the greatest show on earth. Well, really great to get some time with you. So appreciate it. And I hope we can get you back in the new year. Good luck with the holiday season. Really great to have with us Juliet Feld Grossman. She's Chief Executive Officer of Feld Entertainment joining us on this Tuesday from Florida.

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