History
Key Brand is a successor in interest to a number of prior theatrical production and distribution companies acquired through acquisition and/or merger. These include: Livent, Clear Channel Entertainment, PACE Theatrical Group, Magicworks and others. As such it retains interests in a large number of Broadway productions and various related rights. The company was amalgamated into Broadway Across America under Clear Channel Communication's ownership. The credits shown below for "Broadway Across America" date only from the time the entity was acquired by Key Brand on January 23, 2008 for an announced price of $90.4 million.
Broadway Across America became a business unit of Live Nation, Inc. following the spin-off of Live Nation from Clear Channel Communications on December 25, 2005. Clear Channel acquired the assets of Live Nation, which principally consisted of live concert venues and amphitheaters devoted primarily to rock music in February 2000. Clear Channel acquired the company under the name SFX Entertainment which was owned primarily by Robert F.X. Sillerman.
SFX Entertainment in turn was founded by Sillerman in order to "roll up" businesses associated with live entertainment, principally rock music. He began by acquiring Delsner/Slater Concerts in 1996 and a number of acquisitions followed rapidly thereafter. Sillerman's entry into theater began with the acquisition of PACE Theatrical Group in October 1997. In September 1998 SFX acquired Magicworks Entertainment, Inc. This Miami-based company promoted concerts and managed touring events such as magician David Copperfield and musicals Jekyll & Hyde and Evita. It had been a partner of PACE unit PACE Theatricals for some time. (PACE in turn was controlled by Texas-based theater veteran Allen Becker) Also acquired was production company American Artists, which controlled several theaters in the Boston area including the historic Colonial Theater. Magicworks had been controlled by Lee D. Marshall and Joe Marsh (Lee and Marsh later reunited in the company Magic Arts & Entertainment). The summer of 1999 saw court approval granted for a purchase of the bankrupt Livent (then controlled by Canadian entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky and CAA founder Mike Ovitz), a deal that had been initiated a year earlier. Livent, once one of the premier theatrical production companies, owned such touring shows as Ragtime and Fosse, as well as a number of venues in Canada and the United States. Its bankruptcy had been attributed to widespread accounting fraud. In early 2000 SFX acquired Jujamcyn Productions of Minneapolis, a touring theatrical production company. SFX already owned half of Jujamcyn, acquired through PACE Entertainment.
In addition to the above companies and assets, SFX also acquired (and therefor sold to Clear Channel) a large number of theatrical and other venues in the UK from Apollo Leisure Group.
On December 16, 2010 Key Brand completed the acquisition of Theater Direct International from Hollywood Media Corp. for an announced price of $43.1 million in cash and other considerstion, which owns and operates the following content driven e-commerce websites: Broadway.com, Theater.com, Theatre.com and Theatre.co.uk.
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