Industry Entertainment Subsidiaries Cirque Dreams Founded 14 March 1980 Key person Neil Goldberg | Parent AUA Private Equity Founder Vincent E. Egan Number of locations 2 Type of business Privately held company | |
Predecessors Vee Corporation
Blue Star Media, LLC Key people Eric Grilly (CEO)
Neil Goldberg
(Cirque Dreams president) Divisions VStar Production Services
VStar Costumes & Creatures Headquarters Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States | ||
VStar Entertainment Group is a family entertainment production company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It produces Sesame Street Live, a live touring stage show based on the television series. It has also produced stage shows based on Dragon Tales, The Muppets and Muppet Babies, Bear in the Big Blue House, Curious George, and Barney & Friends.
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Vee Corporation
Vee Corporation was started on March 14, 1980 from an idea by founder Vincent Egan to produce a live character show just for Sesame Street. At the time, there were only three touring family shows, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and two ice shows, Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice. He based it off his time working for the Ice Follies which had a segment with those Sesame Street Muppets. Egan approached Jim Henson's company and Children's Television Workshop, who were interested. He then found an investor in Gordon Stofer, whose Norwest Growth Fund took half ownership in the company for $500,000. Egan refinanced his home mortgage for $25 thousand in additional funding. With the funding, Vee was able to sign a licensing agreement with the Children's Television Workshop for the characters.
The first Sesame Street Live show opened in September 1980 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, Minnesota for a five-day run. That show was successful. The following shows in five locations had lackluster attendance costing VEE the profits made in Bloomington. Egan figured that the marketing material was confusing people in those markets as what type of show was not specified. He overhauled the script and marketing while getting his creditors to wait for payments. That Christmas, the show went on to play for four weeks at Madison Square Garden's 4,000-seat Felt Forum in New York City before an audience of 100,000 people.
Around 2000, Egan purchased Norwest Fund's stake in the corporation. He also formed two divisions, Vee Costumes & Creatures and Vee Production Services, to successfully diversify the company.
Blue Star
Sanjay Syal started Blue Star Productions before 1995 to produced trade shows. Syal then started up Blue Star Media in 2011 for the Discover the Dinosaurs traveling exhibition. With the success of the exhibition, Syal then proceeded to wind down Blue Star Productions as contracts expired. Blue Star Media then started to look for a partner finding AUA Private Equity, who purchase a share of the company from Syal in early June 2014 via a leverage buyout. A tented version of the Discover exhibition was launched in 2014 at two state fairs, New York State Fair, and the California State Fair, and had 14% of total yearly attendance for the exhibition.
VStar Entertainment Group
On April 1, 2015, Blue Star Media, LLC purchased VEE Corporation with Egan continuing on as a consultant. In 2015, VEE Corporation and Blue Star Media, a producer and promoter of consumer shows and events became VStar Entertainment Group. In August 2015, the company agreed to partner with the Pro Football Hall of Fame for a mobile tour. In April 2016, Vstar hired Eric Grilly as CEO from Comcast Sports Group.
In November 2016, Sesame Workshop announced an agreement with Feld Entertainment for a new Sesame Street Live show thus ending Vstar's version in July 2017. But the company would continued other Sesame Street shows at various locations plus the United Service Organizations tour while still providing costumes.
In January 2017, Vstar acquired Cirque Productions, based in South Florida. Neil Goldberg, Cirque Productions founder and Broadway director, was retained as president of Cirque Dreams.