Feld Entertainment

Feld Entertainment Inc. is a live show production company which owns the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and a number of other traveling shows.

In 1967, Irvin Feld and his brother Israel and Roy M. Hofheinz offered to purchase the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Broadway producers Cy Feuer and Ernest H. Martin sued in December 1967 to stop the sale. Instead the purchase of the combined circuses from the Ringling and North families to the Feld group took place for $8 million. The company was taken public in 1969.Kenneth Feld joined the business in 1970 after finishing college.

Mattel purchased the company in 1971 for $50 million in Mattel stock while Feld continued managing the circus. After Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida in 1971, the circus company attempted to cash in on the resulting tourism surge by opening Circus World in nearby Haines City. Irvin & Kenneth Feld Productions in 1979 purchased from Chicago-based William Wirtz the Holiday on Ice and Ice Follies for $12 million. The company soon approached Disney about doing a Disney show on Ice. By 1980, the company produced 10 circus and ice show TV specials. An investment was also made in Barnum, the new Broadway musical. In 1981, Ken Feld started the Beyond Belief show at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino.