Round Room Live is an innovative force in the growing arena of large-scale family entertainment. The company's success undoubtedly stems from the complementary expertise of its co-presidents, Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, and their understanding of the synergy of live entertainment's creative and business aspects.

Early on, Shaw learned how to adapt intellectual property for live audiences, developing expertise in the complex logistics of mounting large-scale experiences. Shaw's work on many theatrical adaptations proved particularly valuable, teaching him how to translate familiar media properties into engaging stage productions without watering down their core appeal.

Linden's path was grounded in finance and business development. His early career focused on analyzing entertainment properties across different formats and audiences. At Concert Productions International, he expanded his interests beyond traditional concert touring into family entertainment and theatrical productions. However, family-oriented productions were deprioritized when Live Nation acquired CPI in 2006.

During their tenure at CPI, the pair worked on tours for some of music's biggest names, including the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand. While managing these major tours, Shaw and Linden noticed opportunities in the family entertainment and exhibition spaces that larger companies overlooked. They began developing a vision for a new company focused on this underserved market.

When Shaw and Linden launched Round Room Live in 2016, they combined their unique understanding of production logistics and business development. This helped them pioneer new approaches to live entertainment, particularly in adapting digital content and intellectual properties for live audiences. The company now moves from success to success with touring family shows for Blippi, Sesame Street, and Peppa Pig and exhibitions highlighting Formula 1, Nelson Mandela, and Jurassic Park.

Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden recently joined Lawrence Peryer on the Spotlight On podcast to discuss Round Room Live and its origin story. The conversation also details the difficulties of using unfamiliar venues, how to keep parents happy at a kids' show, the distinct marketing behind family entertainment, and the challenges of working with beloved brands and characters. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

An Opportunity in the Sleepy Spot

Lawrence Peryer: Let's start with the basics. What does the name Round Room mean?

Stephen Shaw: In 2016, I was just about to launch the company and was trying to figure out a brand. Full disclosure: I am a big Phish fan. I was tearing through artist catalogs; I saw Round Room—not one of their best albums, but one I know and like. The name worked because we performed shows in rooms and 360-degree spaces, doing immersive experiences "in the round." The name fits both our vertical and project mandate.

Lawrence: What market opportunity did you see in the live entertainment space? What made you think this was worth jumping into?

Jonathan Linden: When we were at Concert Productions International doing tours for the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand, there were longer times between tour cycles. You had to activate the overhead, so we got into kids and family tours, Broadway shows, and exhibitions. When that business was sold to Live Nation, they focused on sponsored touring and direct ancillaries like Ticketmaster. Some of these other elements didn't make sense to them. We saw the opportunity in all this ticketed entertainment that had historically been a sleepy spot for bigger companies.

Stephen: We're going into venues that don't have a company attached to them. Few players are willing to stand up and say, "I want to promote this company, this exhibition, this experience in this market." Every day, more and more people are getting involved in this space because it's growing and can be very strong and lucrative. However, our focus has primarily been on creating and distributing the best events globally.

Lawrence: It's always stuck with me how interesting it is to look at nontraditional spaces, whether a warehouse, a loft, or whatever. Once I started to visit other cities and look around, I would think, "Oh, it would be interesting to stage something there." Are you finding that you are going into purpose-built or preexisting exhibition spaces? Or is there still an interest and an opportunity to scout and find places that aren't existing venues?

Jonathan: We use some established venues, such as our F1 exhibition in the ExCeL Centre in London. But we're still doing a lot of looking at venues, particularly through the pandemic period where buildings changed their purpose, and people who were going to have a gigantic celebrity chef restaurant say, "This isn't going to happen; could you turn this into something?"

On the flip side, you get a lot of calls from people who have a drippy basement somewhere that they think can be turned into an exciting space. We've learned some of the hard lessons of figuring out how to load in and out, where the bathroom will be, and where the merchandise area will be. It's not preestablished, such as in an arena or a theater.

Stephen: Some of these venues, like ExCeL in London, have had many other shows, so the marketing side becomes a lot easier. You're not sending people down to an address at the corner of Mercer and Broadway in SoHo. You're sending people to the large exhibition space where they've previously seen other shows. They think, "I know where to park, I know where I'm going to get my beer before, and I know what I'm going to see."

Lawrence: I could imagine that as exciting as the blank canvas of a new, never-before-seen spot is, whether it's building the physical plant or educating the audience, you have to convince the crowd that it's going to be good; just go there. It's different when you have a place that's a known quantity.

Stephen: We did that with the Rolling Stones exhibition in New York City, a show called Exhibitionism. It was in the most spectacular event space, a big, beautiful warehouse that was open and vast. It was twenty thousand square feet in an old art studio gallery. But it was tucked south of the Meatpacking District, and we had to give directions on every advertisement and post. You've got to give them subway routes and tell them what to say to the Uber driver.

Fortuitous Bounces

Lawrence: What was your first show under Round Room?

Stephen: The Stones. It was Exhibitionism.

Lawrence: Oh, really? So you started small? [laughter]

Stephen: Well, listen—these are the fortuitous bounces you need when starting a business. TEG in Australia invested in the show, launched at the Saatchi Gallery in the summer of 2016. They had great creative and worked with the band but needed expertise in operations and ticketing for North America. I got on a plane, went to London, saw the show, and went from London down to Sydney to meet with the producers and the investor group. On the way home, I mapped out Round Room's scope of work for the production and told them what we could do. By the time I landed, they'd already accepted it.

It was the best thing for Round Room at the time. We structured the deal to reduce our fees in exchange for Round Room branding on everything—every press release and marketing material. And the show was phenomenal; it was the kickoff point. That allowed us to get into the space where our goals were exhibitions and experiences for kids and families.

Lawrence: How do you work with intellectual property brands? Where do you enter the development process?

Jonathan: We had to prove ourselves to get in the room. These brands are incredibly valuable—Entertainment One was bought by Hasbro for 4 billion, largely for Peppa Pig. You can consume this content anywhere on phones or streaming services. Live entertainment is the last frontier for seeing it in person.

Stephen: We work closely with IP owners, taking a collaborative approach. Our creative team—writers, directors, choreographers, designers—works with their brand team. We share scripts and creative concepts throughout development. We've never taken the approach of "Thanks for the license; we'll show you the finished product." We create authentic experiences that are incredibly accurate to the brand.

Lawrence: I want to ask you about working with these intellectual property brands. I'm interested in two aspects of it. One is the creative and development process for a show. And the other is sort of a subset of that, which is maintaining the integrity of the brand's voice.

Jonathan: The process usually starts when the brand has a vision and wants to explain how it can be realized. Then, our team translates what that would mean for the stage.

Differentiating ourselves from the major promoters, we continue to do all this stuff ourselves, including producing, which most major promoters don't do. They promote and tour existing content. They don't create content. And so that's something we've done, and it can be a fulfilling but somewhat daunting task at times. We've got a major brand and a concept, and you've got to translate that to something that goes on the stage with the discerning audience of young children who need to be engaged and delighted and, at times, aren't shy to tell you what they like and don't like.

Stephen: We take a very collaborative approach. Our creative team—writers, directors, choreographers, scenic, design, or music—will work with the brand's team. We all sit in the room and draft scripts and creative concepts. It's never "thank you for the license; we're going to go off and create a show and hope you like it."

We want to create authentic experiences. Everything we produce needs to be incredibly accurate because we'll get called out on it by the brand and its fans if we screw up.

Happy Kids = Happy Parents

Lawrence: You currently produce 250 Blippi shows per year. Is that one production, or do you run it simultaneously in multiple cities or territories?

Stephen: We've created three Blippi shows through our license. We typically only tour one in a certain territory at a time. So we have one Blippi show in North America right now. When we create a show, it tours for eighteen months to two years in North America and then goes internationally. Then, the new show comes out in North America and will go internationally when the third show comes into North America. We're constantly updating and rotating.

The new Blippi show just launched three weeks ago, and it's fantastic. Live musicians play instruments on stage, and the kids love it. We try to create this concert experience, but your approach must be methodical and strategic. Don't overplay your hand, and ensure you have a lot of volume in the market and that everyone's doing well.

Jonathan: Many years ago, when you'd have a popular brand in North America you wanted to take to other places, you had to do a bunch of research to figure out what channels air the brand and if it's popular in different territories worldwide. Now, these brands are on streaming services or YouTube—they're popular everywhere. Blippi came out of YouTube, and kids can watch it whenever and wherever they want. And it just has pretty global penetration. There are so many different options, territories, and places that you can take the tour.

Lawrence: How do you think about parents? If you sit a bunch of parents down and ask, "What do you think of Blippi?" Most say, "Oh my God, my kid loves—Blippi drives me nuts." It's not necessarily their entertainment choice, but they're participating with their kids and caring about what they're into. How do you think about the parents in terms of the actual show? Because they can't dread going.

Stephen: We limit narrative and dialogue on stage and drive music as the key focus. What comes from that are happy kids, kids dancing in the aisles, and singing and jumping around. What comes from happy kids? Happy parents. Parents can sit back and relax, even if they can't stand Blippi or Paw Patrol. Their kids have a great time because they're engaged and entertained for ninety minutes. That's a success right there.

Lawrence: Then we're that much closer to bedtime. [laughter] How do you reach parents these days? You must have the same challenge that every other marketer has today. There's a fragmented ecosystem; digital and social media are not everything they were cracked up to be. How are you turning parents into ticket buyers?

Stephen: Digital marketing is still very effective for us. Mommy blogs are huge. Facebook groups are big for us. We work closely with the venues and promoters. We've sold other events in this space to the same parents. A kid can pull on the parent's pant leg and say, "I want to go see Blippi," but they're not really going to know about it unless they see a big billboard in that market. It's the parent who's got to know that it's coming. And usually, it's messaging through the venue or the promoter through digital means.

Jonathan: I think all parents have the same problem once the weekend's rolling around: you're not 100% sure what to do with the kids. They want to be entertained. And so you look online for what to do in New York this weekend. We still get a decent amount of walk-up fans because, I think, particularly with young kids, you never know if they will change what they're into. In the concert world, you can buy tickets months ahead of time. But with preschoolers, you don't know if they're into the same characters or if they'll be sick or have T-ball practice. As we get closer to the event, there are a lot of times when we're gaining the benefit of the digital ecosystem, being able to serve up what's happening that weekend.

Lawrence: What are the pressures on you and your creative team to continue providing those surprise and delight moments during a show? And is tech always a rising cost in production, or does it allow you to do more exciting things at a more efficient cost?

Stephen: I'll start by saying that at our core, across every show, whether it's kids and family or exhibitions, we're doing the same things: To tell a great story, to have a really exciting event, and to have something that people want to see. We want them walking out, getting on their phone, texting their friends, or posting a photo—that's it. We want people to think, "That was two thumbs up. I want to tell everyone I know that they should go." That's creating authentic experiences.

Obviously, technology has allowed us to do a lot more. With our kids and family touring, we're doing all sorts of big set and scenic pieces, and we tell this sort of scene-by-scene story through giant LED walls. In our exhibitions, we use projection mapping, AR technology, great video design, and many elements to make things more exciting. As this technology is becoming bigger and bigger, there are better prices. And so that's allowed us to keep our costs under control with what we're producing. But at our core, we don't start and say, "Hey, let's create some sort of advanced technological experience." At our core, we're saying, "Let's tell a great story and create a great narrative for our audience."

Keep an eye on Round Room Live and its ever-expanding roster of touring stage shows and exhibitions at roundroomlive.com.

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