VStar's Sesame Street Investment
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A story about how VStar Entertainment started from a small investment in Sesame Street live shows and grew into a major live entertainment company that was eventually acquired by Cirque du Soleil.
"Some guy was watching Sesame Street and thought Sesame Street should do a live show. He raised $500,000 from an investor and mortgaged his house to get an extra $25,000 from his home equity, so he had $525,000 total. He got the license to Sesame Street and started doing shows. Then he expanded to Muppets shows.
Later, he merged with another company doing similar work, and the whole thing eventually got bought by Cirque du Soleil. Now they're doing massive numbers - just their Paw Patrol shows alone did $40 million in ticket sales in one year, and that's not even counting merchandise.
Cirque du Soleil, which bought them, does $1 billion a year in revenue. About 5-10% of all Las Vegas tourists go to a Cirque show when they're in town. They've since bought Blue Man Group and VStar Entertainment. Together, they sell about 14 million tickets per year - 10 million from Cirque shows, 2 million from Blue Man, and 2 million from VStar."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.