Sidelined by the pandemic for much of the past year, licensed live events, including touring children’s/family shows, are coming back in stages.

The slow build is for a variety of reasons. Of course, there’s caution based on health concerns as well as consumers’ willingness to gather with others even as pandemic restrictions ease. But from the production standpoint, there’s the time needed to do the basics, such as securing dates, bringing back laid-off employees, hiring actors and mounting marketing campaigns.

It’s A Start
First there’s a smattering of open-air and small indoor shows — some starting this month — that are designed to meet mask mandates, social distancing and capacity limitations. Then there’s the fall, potentially with larger venues and capacity crowds. Few licensees that operate the shows expect a full comeback until well into 2022. But it’s a start.

“We need to build up trust again with consumers that their health and safety is at the forefront of our minds, but also provide a safe environment,” says Matthew Proulx, VP Location-Based Experiences at Hasbro. “You are going to have a big buildup of shows going out” this summer. “It’s going to be about going out in the right time frame and giving the shows some space and air. We’ve ridden a rollercoaster of emotion and uncertainty so we are going to go slow in the beginning.”

“Walking Experience”
To that point, Hasbro licensee Right Angel Entertainment is readying “Clue Live!: An Outdoor Walking Experience” for launch in June in LA and plans to expand it to Washington, DC and Chicago this summer and Atlanta and New York in the fall. As part of the show, socially distanced “detectives” solve a murder mystery during a walking tour of the city.

And licensee Kilburn Live is resuming its Nerf Challenge competition starting May 28 at Fair Park’s Centennial Hall in Dallas, where it runs through Aug. 8, but with socially distanced and mask wearing requirements. Preorders for tickets began April 23 and demand has been steady, says Proulx. Kilburn launched the competition indoors in Los Angeles in December 2019 before the pandemic brought it to a halt.

“People want to get back to normal and get outside and travel,” says Proulx. “But whether they are fixed location or touring experiences it is very much ‘walk before you run’ and we’re focused on limited capacity, socially distanced and following local ordinances.  That varies widely depending on where you are in the world or even in the U.S., but as long as you continue to follow all the safety protocols, you are fine.  You want people to feel safe and secure and the last thing you want to do is start running and all of a sudden you are tied to a bad situation. It is about being smart and pragmatic about it.”

Many of the touring shows and experiences are starting in regions with high vaccination and low infection rates, or in areas in which governmental restrictions have been relaxed. ViacomCBS licensee Cirque du Soleil’s Vstar Entertainment Group started its “Paw Patrol Live: Race to the Rescue” tour last Friday (May 21) in Sydney, Australia  the same city in which “Bluey’s Big Play” live tour launched (at the Sydney Opera House) last Wednesday (May 19); that tour has 31 stops in Australia through Aug. 16.

“Blippi The Musical” is scheduled to kick off a 12-stop tour on July 6 at the Raising Cane’s River Center in Baton Rouge, LA and running through early August.

For the most part, the U.S. tours are expected to be shorter this year and, in many cases, are still in the process of being scheduled. Kilburn Live’s Power Rangers Live! has a landing page, but no information beyond “Coming This Year to A Theater Near You!” and asking visitors for contact information so they can be informed when tickets go on sale. And Nerf Challenge doesn’t yet have dates set beyond Dallas, says Proulx.

The resumption of events will provide a lifeline to the companies operating them. Cirque, which bought Vstar in 2018, filed for bankruptcy in July, then emerged from bankruptcy in November with new investors; it had laid off the bulk of its 3,300 employees at the start of the pandemic in North America as shows and tours were cancelled. And Feld Entertainment, whose portfolio includes Sesame Street Live, Monster Jam, Disney on Ice, and others, laid off 900-1,200 of its 2,200 employees at the beginning of the pandemic.  In both cases, many of the employees have since been hired back.

If nothing else, the pandemic taught the touring companies to adopt new practices. Hasbro licensee Paromo introduced a virtual play camp across Columbia, Mexico and Peru and other Latin America countries featuring the toymaker’s brands including Peppa Pig, PJ Masks, Transformers, My Little Pony and others that started last summer and is continuing this year. And shows that were once almost exclusively planned for indoors will now likely have an outdoor strategy as well.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says an executive at one of the tour operators. “Two years ago we wouldn’t have thought about this (outdoors) because of the potential for weather elements and other issues.  But the need for businesses to stay alive, keep revenue coming in and provide consumers with experiences, forced us to be smart and innovative and these types of events will be much more of an opportunity moving forward.”