Cirque du Soleil, SOLD
- Thread starterruinexplorer
- Start date
What Rigger?
I'm so fly....I Neverland.
Hmmmm....
It's weird that these articles talk about this as it's paving the way for Cirque to be in China, when Cirque has been in China for years. This sounds to me less like a Chinese take over of Cirque and more like the conglomerate buying and selling we have seen in the film and music industry.
techieman33
Well-Known Member
Having some Chinese ownership should help to cut a lot of red tape and make it easier to do shows there. At least that's the way it seems to work in the technology sector.
True. But more than anything Cirque has had a problem putting butts in seats in China. I think their biggest issue has been a matter of appreciation for Chinese artistic style vs. French Canadian artistic style.
Will be interesting to see where this leads. Cirque did saturate the market. They were never able to do that well in the NYC or LA markets. That might be due to the huge overhead it takes to run one of these shows... the nut is just not there to be made in the more expensive and competitive markets. In a casino the shows do not have to totally stand on their own. I'm sure most do but that is not the sole purpose of the show.
I find it interesting that in the Canadian news, they mention that private equity firms rarely get into this type of transaction for the long haul. That means that the new major share holder could potentially sell it again in a few years. I think that will be a much more interesting development in the company's history.
The more I think about this, the biggest question is the future of Guy. He is keeping a minority ownership share and staying on in "an advisory position". Does that mean he will be a useless figurehead on a board of directors or will he remain a creative force behind Cirque regardless of who is the majority share owner?
