Feld Entertainment names Denis Sullivan VP, int’l tours
Feld Entertainment, a producer of live touring family entertainment experiences, has named Denis Sullivan as vice president of international tours.
In his new role, Florida-based Sullivan will work alongside a veteran team focusing on booking and developing tours around the globe.
Feld’s properties include Monster Jam, Monster Energy Supercross, Disney On Ice, Marvel Universe LIVE!, Sesame Street Live!, and Jurassic World Live Tour.
Sullivan joins the company with more than 20 years of experience in the live entertainment industry. Feld says his expertise in worldwide tour planning and operations, venue negotiations and strategic planning “will ensure the company’s continued international growth”.
He joins Feld from Herschend Live (formerly Harlem Globetrotters) where he was VP of global tour planning
Sullivan joins Feld from Herschend Live (formerly Harlem Globetrotters International) where he was VP of global tour planning.
His four-decade career in live entertainment has taken him from humble beginnings in production to working with Louis Walsh and Boyzone, repping artists at the Kurland Agency, heading up global touring at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and leading business development internationally for the world’s most famous exhibition basketball team, Harlem Globetrotters.
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ILMC speaker spotlight: Christoph Scholz, Semmel Concerts
The International Live Music Conference (ILMC) is now less than a month away and, as more and more chairs and panellists are announced, IQ catches up with some key speakers to hear what they hope to get out of this year’s conference.
First up is Christoph Scholz of SC Exhibitions, a division of German promoter Semmel Concerts and the company behind Los Angeles conference the Experience Economy Meeting (TEEM) – formerly the Touring Exhibitions Meeting.
Scholz will appear alongside Kilimanjaro Live’s Lucy Levitt to co-chair ILMC’s Touring Entertainment: Game For a Show panel – which this year moves to a bigger room to satisfy demand – to discuss why family shows, touring exhibitions and other kinds of immersive, alternative content are piquing the interest of promoters and fans alike.
Joining the chairs are Harlem Globetrotters’ Arnold Bernard, Secret Cinema’s Amy Farrant, Hartshorn-Hook Enterprises/Immersive Everywhere’s Brian Hook, Nicolás Renna from Proactiv and Alex Homfray of Alex Homfray Cultural Destinations.
IQ: What do you expect to be the main talking points at your panel?
CS: My co-chair, Lucy Levitt, and I are expecting some exciting guests this year. We will ask Arnold Bernard from Harlem Globetrotters how they have managed to keep such an iconic sports entertainment troupe relevant for so many years.
Amy Farrant, the marketing director of [immersive cinema experience specialist] Secret Cinema, is also joining the panel. Secret Cinema has just signed a deal with Disney and is expanding globally – this will deliver us plenty of talking points. Brian Hook from [theatre experience company] Immersive Everywhere also be there to will tell us everything about the forthcoming Doctor Who Experience in London.
“Our aim is to explore the key developments across touring exhibitions, pop culture and family shows”
You’ve moved up to a bigger room for 2020. How do you expect the session to compare to previous years?
We are hosting a special double-panel event this spring, which provides a great opportunity for our colleagues in the experience and live entertainment fields.
The first will be at ILMC on 5 March in London. Then, on the first weekend of May, we will also have a panel at The Experience Economy Meeting (TEEM) in Los Angeles. The second panel will pick up on the themes discussed in London, creating a fantastic intercontinental partnership of ILMC in London and TEEM Los Angeles.
Our aim with both panels is to explore the key developments and brightest new spectacles across touring exhibitions, pop culture and family shows.
“Touring exhibitions are benefiting from globalisation much in the same way as live touring is”
What are some of the biggest trends you’re seeing coming through in the family/touring/alternative entertainment world?
Looking at the classic staples in this non-traditional touring sector – which includes everything that is not rock, pop or another musical genre – touring exhibitions, family shows and events such as comic conventions are benefiting from globalisation much in the same way as live touring is.
There are more venues, more markets opening up and more opportunities. I am personally fascinated by the likes of The Haus of Gaga in Las Vegas or The Zone: Britney Spears in Los Angeles.
Are we seeing new forms of fan worlds here?
To find out the answer to this question and more, come along to ILMC’s Touring Entertainment panel at 5 p.m. on Thursday 5 March.
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Free entertainment event tickets for unpaid US federal workers
Organisations across the United States are offering free event tickets to furloughed government workers, in a show of solidarity with employees who have not received paychecks since the beginning of the government shutdown in December.
Over 800,000 federal workers are going without pay as a result of the shutdown which began on 22 December, making it officially the longest in US history.
In response, live music venues, cinemas, sports teams and museums across the country have offered tickets to events free of charge.
Exhibition basketball team Harlem Globetrotters are offering complimentary tickets to any government employee currently on furlough. The offer includes any ticket to the team’s 2019 Fan Powered North American tour and will remain valid for as long as the shutdown continues.
“As the Ambassadors of Goodwill, we want to show our support to all those government workers whose paychecks, and by extension their families, are directly impacted,” said Globetrotter president Howard Smith.
“We want to offer our friends the happiness that live music and the performing arts can provide”
Symphonies around the country are similarly doing their bit to help the workers. The Spokane Symphony Orchestra in Washington is among those offering free tickets to shows.
“We are sorry for the hardships our federal workers have had to endure during the shutdown. We want to offer our friends some wonderful music and entertainment to give them the happiness that live music and the performing arts can provide,” announced symphony executive director Jeff vom Saal.
Orchestras in Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Boston have also made tickets available.
A disagreement in Congress initiated the shutdown after president Donald Trump refused to approve the federal budget unless it included US$5.7 billion towards the building of the Mexican border wall. Democrats rejected the request, placing the government in deadlock.
US rapper Cardi B spoke out against the shutdown in an Instagram video posted yesterday. The video, in which the rapper refers to the country as a “hellhole”, has so far received over 12.5 million views.
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Trailblazer: Denis Sullivan, Herschend Live
Welcome to the latest edition of Trailblazers – IQ’s regular series of Q&As with the inspirational figures forging their own paths in the global concert business.
From people working in challenging conditions or markets to those simply bringing a fresh perspective to the music world, Trailblazers aims to spotlight unique individuals from all walks of life who are making a mark in one of the world’s most competitive industries. (Read the previous Trailblazers interview, with Annika Monari and Alan Vey, here.)
Denis Sullivan, VP of international development at Herschend Live (formerly Harlem Globetrotters International), has charted a career path perhaps unlike any other. His four-decade career in live entertainment has taken him from humble beginnings in production to working with Louis Walsh and Boyzone, repping artists at the Kurland Agency, heading up global touring at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and, finally, leading business development internationally for the world’s most famous exhibition basketball team.
When he says it’s the road less travelled, he’s not joking…
How did you get your start in the industry?
Louis Walsh gave me my start, as such. I was doing production and sound tech work when we met. At that point he had just launched Boyzone, and I became his rep on the road, looking after the band and dealing with all the venues he would book. Louis booked us in every truck stop, barn and theatre he could find, four or five nights a week for two years straight. Louis also instilled the notion in me that we were in the T-shirt- and poster-selling business as much, if not more, than the ticket- and CD-selling business. He was very smart in that respect, and very good to me.
Shortly after that finished in early 1997, five friends of mine were in a band, Rubyhorse. They called me up, told me they were going to America in two weeks and asked if I wanted to go. So, off we set, looking for adventure. They actually ended up doing really well for a time: they played all the major late-night talk shows, put out a couple of albums and had a hit [‘Sparkle’], before being swallowed up in the all the record company mergers that were happening around that time.
At the same time, an agent by the name of Elizabeth Rush – ex-William Morris, Tour Consultants Inc., Concerted Efforts – was setting up her own shop, and for some reason I have not figured out to this day, she offered me a job and taught me the agency business from the ground up.
Tell us about your current role.
I run the international business for Herschend Live, of which the Harlem Globetrotters is part. We also have a couple of other projects in development that will come under that umbrella, so stay tuned for news on that.
Herschend Enterprises is an amazing company which focuses on family entertainment, so whether you are visiting one of our many theme parks, aquaria and adventure tours, or watching one of our TV programmes, the business model is the same: to create memories worth repeating. If you do that, the financial part of the business takes care of itself.
The company is led by some of the most brilliant people I have come across – from Andrew Wexler, our CEO of Herschend Enterprises, to Howard Smith, president of Herschend Live, and the entire executive team, our chart is coursed by a long-term vision, rather than short-term gain, and an eye on creating a tremendous culture in which people are inspired to bring their best every day. It’s a privilege to be part of it.
“We are a feeder system for the entire live events industry”
Who have been the biggest influences on your career to date?
I’ve been very fortunate – I haven’t had many employers, but I like to think I took the best lessons from all of them. Louis Walsh certainly had a huge impact on me. Elizabeth Rush has been a great friend and mentor to me down through the years; I still call her today when I want to bounce an idea off someone. Ted Kurland, who really honed my skills as an agent.
I ran global touring at WWE for eight years, and Vince McMahon taught me so much… his influence on me professionally can’t be overstated.
What is the most rewarding aspect of your job?
In the family entertainment world, we are often people’s very first experience of a live event. One can never recapture that feeling. What we are doing is giving people their first taste of an experience that cannot be replicated online, on TV or on any other platform. We are showing these kids who come to see our shows that going to see something live, at a venue, is cool.
We are a feeder system for the entire live events industry, be it concerts, exhibitions, Broadway or sporting events. That is the most rewarding part of the job.
And the most challenging?
Controlling the uncontrollable. Weather, exchange rates, political events, terrorism… I once got a call from the ops team telling me the ship our show containers were on had been taken hostage by pirates and it was unlikely to be released in time to reach port for show day – there isn’t a lot that can prepare you for that phone call!
Also, with the sheer number of shows coming out now it takes more work to stay relevant and sustainable. We don’t take a year off to make a record – we tour every month of the year – so doing that in a sustainable manner to still sell millions of tickets each year takes quite a bit of work.
“The ship our show containers were on had been taken hostage by pirates … there isn’t a lot that can prepare you for that phone call!”
How has the business changed since you started out?
We, as an industry, are so much smarter. When I started it was ‘book the venue, throw some advertising up and hope it all works out’. Now, with the analytics we have access to, we can really get granular in our decision-making process. We can compare venue performance more accurately; measure the impact of our marketing spend in a much more targeted way; predict how a price increase will impact selling patterns; and know how a show will sell before we ever go up on sale.
What, if anything, could the industry do better?
We could give back more to the communities we visit. How much catering gets thrown out at the end of a night that could be donated to a local homeless shelter? To me, there is no reason in the world that every major show should not have a local charitable or social tie-in.
Michael Martin at Effect Partners and Maria Brunner from Insight Management both do tremendous work in this area, but we all have an unparallelled opportunity to improve the world we live in through this industry. We should embrace and make the most of that.
What advice would you give to someone hoping to make it in live entertainment?
Seek people out. Ask questions. Work like you mean it. Don’t be afraid to ask someone to mentor you.
As a whole, we have very generous people in the industry who all pretty much came up the same way. I do believe we have a responsibility to pay it forward to the next generation in that regard.
If you’d like to take part in a future Trailblazers interview, or nominate someone else for inclusion, email IQ’s news editor, Jon Chapple, on [email protected].