Other Performing Arts Companies (U.S., NAICS 71119)

An investor's primer — for public-market and private investors alike.

Short page — single-child pass-through. In the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the five-digit industry 71119, Other Performing Arts Companies, contains exactly one six-digit child, 711190 (also "Other Performing Arts Companies"). The two levels are effectively identical: every dollar, firm, and employee counted at 71119 is the same one counted at 711190. This page gives the level's own ground-truth figures and the shape of the business, then points you to the child primer for full detail.

For the complete treatment — investable universe, how the money works, demand drivers, regulation, consolidation, risks, and how to invest — see the 711190 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS 71119 covers businesses that produce live performing-arts spectacles that are not plays, dance, or concerts — circuses, ice shows, magic and illusion shows, and traveling carnival-style productions.[1] The load-bearing word is produce: a firm here creates and owns the show and puts performers on stage. Companies that only book venues, promote events, or sell tickets sit in other codes, as do theater, dance, and music.[1]

This is the commercial "spectacle" corner of the live-entertainment economy — selling seats to a produced experience. It rides the same secular tailwind as concerts and live sports (the shift toward "experiences over goods," and the post-pandemic surge in willingness to pay for live events sometimes called "funflation"),[2] but it is unusually concentrated and unusually private: a small number of large producers command most of the revenue, and there is no pure-play public company in the code.

2. What's inside — and why the level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy: each five-digit industry breaks into one or more six-digit national industries. When a five-digit industry has only one six-digit child, the two are the same population by definition — the U.S. Census Bureau simply did not subdivide it further.

So 71119 is 711190. The scope — circuses, ice-skating companies, magic shows, carnival traveling shows — the exclusions (theater → 711110; dance → 711120; musical groups → 711130; promoters → 711310/711320; agents and managers → 711410; freelance non-musician performers → 711510), and the private-and-nonprofit ownership mix are all described in full in the child primer.[1]

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Because 71119 has one child, its rollup totals are simply the 711190 totals. Per U.S. federal statistical agencies, the employer core of the industry is small. The figures below mix two vintages — the 2022 Economic Census (receipts, firm count, concentration) and the 2023 County Business Patterns, or CBP (establishments, employment, payroll) — so treat them as a rough composite, not one perfectly synchronized annual dataset.

That works out to roughly $6.5 million of revenue per firm, about 15 employees per establishment, and average pay near $52,000 — a modest employer footprint for an industry whose flagship shows sell out arenas.[3][4]

Undercount caveat — read this before trusting the totals. These federal figures materially understate the true world of "other performing arts," and because ownership at the bottom of the industry is small-scale and individual, the miss is large:

1. Non-employer operators fall out. Many magicians, illusionists, and one- or two-person variety acts have no payroll, so CBP — which counts only establishments with paid employees — never sees them.[5]
2. Freelancers are counted elsewhere. Individual producers and performers are routed to Independent Artists (711510), pulling thousands of practitioners out of this bucket.[1]
3. Classification drift on the giants. The largest producers straddle codes — Feld Entertainment earns much of its money from motorsports properties (Monster Jam, Supercross) that map to spectator-sports codes, even though its Disney On Ice and Ringling circus lines fit 711190 squarely.[6]

So read the ~$1.73 billion as the visible tip: the residual commercial core, not the economic weight of the companies that dominate it. Our ground-truth stats for this level contain no industry-wide figures for attendance, ticket volume, capacity utilization, average ticket price, operating expense, margin, or growth — none are estimated here.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

Because 71119 equals 711190, the investable map is the child's map — and its defining feature is that the value is private. The producers that anchor the industry (Feld Entertainment; Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group and its Blue Man Group) are privately held, and no listed company's primary business is 711190. Public investors reach the theme only through larger live-entertainment, venue, ticketing, or intellectual-property (IP) firms whose classification overlaps neighboring codes — proxies, not clean exposure. The full public proxy list (with tickers and scale) and the roster of major private owners are laid out in the 711190 primer, Section 4.

5. How the money works

Owners here make money the way any produced-show business does — selling seats to a spectacle whose creation cost is largely fixed and whose touring cost is largely variable — which makes this a high-operating-leverage business: revenue above a show's break-even attendance drops mostly to the bottom line, and losses compound fast below it. Revenue layers ticket sales and premium seating on top of sponsorship, merchandise, licensing/royalties, corporate and private bookings, and media rights; the economics that matter are fill rate (attendance versus capacity), realized ticket yield, number of performances, per-head ancillary spend, and whether the producer owns its marquee IP or pays royalties to license it. Touring and Las Vegas-style residency are two different cost structures. The full walk-through — including the break-even formula and cash-timing/seasonality mechanics — is in the 711190 primer, Section 5.

6. Demand drivers

The demand picture is the child's: discretionary spending and consumer confidence; the experience-economy shift (a structural tailwind, though the willingness-to-pay surge is cooling);[2] tourism and destination travel (which feed residencies and holiday shows); family formation and recognizable IP; novelty and IP freshness; social-media discovery and institutional bookings; international touring reach; a rising affordability ceiling as ticket prices climb; and competition for the leisure dollar and hour from streaming, concerts, live sports, and theme parks. See the 711190 primer, Section 6.

7. Regulation

Regulation at this level is the child's, because the level is the child. The one industry-specific regime is animal welfare: producers displaying warm-blooded animals need a Class C exhibitor license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS), and a spreading patchwork of state bans and local ordinances has reshaped the animal-circus segment.[7] Broader live-entertainment rules also apply — labor and safety (union agreements, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for rigging and aerial work), immigration (O- and P-category performer visas), ticketing consumer protection (the Federal Trade Commission's fee-disclosure rule, effective May 12, 2025), accessibility (the Americans with Disabilities Act), and copyright. Full detail is in the 711190 primer, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

This is one of the most concentrated industries in the arts, and the concentration is a level fact — our ground-truth stats for 71119 report it directly:

• Four firms account for 84.7% of receipts (CR4, the four-firm concentration ratio); the top eight for 89.7% (CR8); the top twenty for 94%; the top fifty for 97.1%.[3]
• The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) — a standard concentration gauge, higher meaning more concentrated — is 2,416, above the 1,800 line that the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission treat as "highly concentrated."[3][8]

In plain terms: a handful of large producers own the arena-scale business while a long, fragmented tail of small and solo operators shares the rest. Barriers are high at the top (marquee IP, capital, arena relationships, scarce residency slots) and low at the bottom. Consolidation runs through IP and format ownership. The competitive dynamics in full are in the 711190 primer, Section 8.

9. Risks

The risk profile is the child's: high operating leverage on discretionary demand; perishable inventory (an empty seat cannot be re-sold); total-shutdown tail risk (COVID-19 closed venues entirely and pushed Cirque du Soleil into bankruptcy in 2020); flop risk on large sunk creation costs; IP dependence for licensed-franchise shows; execution risk (injury, weather, equipment, travel); labor, visa, and cost inflation; reputational and regulatory pressure (animal-welfare law and activism); venue and platform dependence; key-person and financial opacity in family- and founder-run firms; and federal-data limitations that miss non-employer, nonprofit, and very small operators. See the 711190 primer, Section 9.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Because the level equals its one child, the investment routes are identical. Public-market exposure is all indirect — adjacent live-entertainment, immersive-venue, producer-and-venue, and IP-licensing names, plus ticketing and promotion companies read as demand proxies rather than producers — and the analytic task is to separate live-production economics from each company's other businesses. Private routes are where the industry actually lives — direct equity in a producer or rights-owner, private-equity positions in touring or venue platforms, private credit against contracts or receivables, royalty financings, and minority stakes in proven residencies — underwritten on show-level cash flow, rights ownership, break-even occupancy, and cancellation terms rather than brand fame. The forward base case is a durable but uneven live-experience market: the experience-economy tailwind and destination tourism support attendance, while the affordability ceiling and cooling "funflation" cap price-led upside, so growth leans on volume, new IP, and format innovation.[2] The core tension is concentration versus fragility — the largest owners of durable IP and premium venue access should capture attractive economics, but a single failed production, regulatory change, or consumer pullback can damage results quickly.

Full how-to-invest detail, watch-items, and outlook: 711190 primer, Section 10.

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Sources

Drawn from the child primer (711190); federal size and concentration figures for NAICS 71119 are from our ingested ground-truth stats.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition: 711190 Other Performing Arts Companies (definition and cross-references). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=711190&year=2022
2. Deloitte, "'Funflation' — and live event hype — goes up against more cost-conscious consumers" (Digital Media Trends), 2024. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey/2024/funflation-goes-up-against-cost-conscious-consumers.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 711190 (receipts, firm count, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?codeset=naics~711190
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 711190 (establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll). https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns Methodology (employer-only coverage limitations). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. Feld Entertainment, Company (ownership and brands), 2026. https://www.feldentertainment.com/company/
7. Animal Welfare Institute, "Two More States Ban Wild Animal Circus Acts," 2024; and Humane World for Animals, "Washington restricts wild animals in circuses and traveling shows," 2025. https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/fall-2024/two-more-states-ban-wild-animal-circus-acts/
8. U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, 2023 Merger Guidelines, 2023. https://www.justice.gov/atr/merger-guidelines