- September 3, 2026
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Feld Entertainment has been wowing crowds for nearly six decades. What has enabled it to keep fans coming back to its live productions is not some new technology or crazy software.
“The biggest innovation in our business comes from listening to fans and observing fans,” says Feld Entertainment CEO Juliette Feld Grossman, 42, speaking to the Business Observer virtually in mid-July from the Monster Jam World Finals — the equivalent of the Super Bowl for monster trucks — in Salt Lake City.
That fan-centric attitude has driven the north Manatee County-based company’s evolution into a 365-day entertainment provider with a broadening audience base. Its Disney on Ice production alone has attracted 320 million fans across 74 countries in its 45-year history. (Feld Entertainment operates a variety of productions: Disney on Ice, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Monster Jam and Monster Energy AMA Supercross; company officials decline to disclose specific revenue figures.)
The company was founded in 1967 by Feld Grossman's grandfather, entrepreneur Irvin Feld, after he bought Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Irvin Feld's son Kenneth Feld ran the business for some 30 years, and in 2013, he moved the company’s headquarters from Virginia to Ellenton in Manatee County.
Innovation has been a key part of the business nearly since the beginning, as the company, under all three generations of the Feld family, constantly shifts and tweaks to keep audiences engaged — and coming back. A cousin to innovation at the company is to constantly challenge assumptions and to not do things the way they have always been done.
“What the Feld family has instilled in our culture is a spirit of entrepreneurialism,” Feld Entertainment President Stephen Yaros says. "You are encouraged to take ownership and make decisions…I'm talking like real decisions, big decisions that change the company's direction, and people are encouraged to do it without the fear of failure," regardless of their titles.
One of the major areas where Feld Grossman has sparked a shift with innovation has been in the Monster Jam franchise, changing monster truck rallies from primarily male-dominated events. It began with curiosity and vision.
“The vision was that this should be for the whole family,” Feld Grossman says, while Yaros emphasizes the curious side.
Feld Grossman, he says, has "helped develop the culture where curiosity is rewarded, and I think that curiosity also is one of the greatest competitive advantages we have as an organization.”
Feld Grossman had not been exposed to monster trucks before she joined the company some 16 years ago. She began working for the company in 2010 as director of strategic planning before becoming COO in 2016 and CEO in 2024.
“I'd never been to a motor sport in my life,” Feld Grossman says. “But I immediately loved it.”
While watching the crowds at Monster Jam events, Feld Grossman noticed they were predominantly men.
Inspired by the energy around the sport and feeling that “Monster Jam is for everyone,” Feld Grossman says: “Over time, we started changing the experience."
One way the company achieved that was through a partnership with toy maker Spin Master, which creates toys for Monster Jam, to appeal to a wider audience.
“They created a truck called Sparkle Smash that was a pink and purple sparkly unicorn Monster Jam truck,” Feld Grossman says. “It started doing really, really well.”
The toy gained so much popularity after its 2019 debut that in 2024, the company introduced Sparkle Smash — the six-ton monster truck — at its Monster Jam events.
“We built Sparkle Smash into a full-scale truck based on the fan feedback that we were getting,” Feld Grossman says.
Interest in the unicorn-themed truck has continued to surge. At this summer’s Monster Jam World Finals, the “No. 1 super fan event” was themed around Sparkle Smash with all of the truck’s drivers in attendance at a shimmering pink and purple reception, Feld Grossman says.
“It’s the kind of event that I don’t know we ever could have imagined we'd be cultivating, but that's who our fans are now,” Feld Grossman says. “That's a remarkable validation of the strategy we put in place, and it also says a lot about challenging assumptions.”
Families and children — including little girls — were among the more than 60,000 attendees at July’s Monster Jam World Finals, Yaros says.
“That wasn't happening 20 years ago,” Yaros says. “Juliette's best ideas often start by challenging assumptions that everyone else just accepts. And I think that's where she really has a specialty.”
Feld Grossman also helped develop Monster Jam University — a program in partnership with the University of Northern Ohio that trains athletes to drive 12,000-pound trucks — to shape the next generation of monster truck drivers.
“She did it to make sure that we focused on female athletes, and that we focused on athletes from more diverse cultures,” Yaros says. “Now, when you go to a Monster Jam event and you look at who our athletes are, they're young, they're hip, they're cool. Some of them are females. It really is more of a cross-section of America — that was [Feld Grossman], and that was her mission.”
Another way Feld Entertainment is changing the traditional way of doing things is by introducing artists and characters from other media into its productions.
“Across every property, we've been working with YouTube creators and also musical artists and other characters and entertainment to create these collabs that really drive this relevancy and create these cultural moments for fans,” Feld Grossman says.
In one case, music and exclusive videos from TikTok sensation and country music star Maddox Batson have been incorporated into Ringling Bros. shows.
An additional crossover is with Blippi, a Netflix character popular with children, who appeared at the pit party at Monster Jam World Finals to sign autographs.
“We look at layering things between merchandise and content and live events to create these really full opportunities for our fans that connect them not only with us but also with their favorite other content and performers and creators and artists,” Feld Grossman says.
The concept of layering is also woven into shows to reach multiple generations at once. At Monster Jam, Feld Grossman says, kids might be attracted to a truck that looks like a dog or a school bus, while parents may be interested in the drivers and their stories.
With all its productions, the company works “very hard to make sure that we always have layers,” Feld Grossman says, including humor that children may find funny and parents can appreciate on a different level.
Using a combination of social media and merchandise, the company has also been engaging fans 365 days a year. All Monster Jam events are live-streamed, Feld Grossman adds, which gives those who can’t attend in person a chance to feel a part of the action.
In the age of cell phones and a myriad of distractions, one element is vital to keeping people engaged. "It is on us to make sure that the show we're making is radically exciting, and so we look at the pacing of our shows very carefully,” Feld Grossman says.
“We have a music change, a lighting change, an event — different kinds of tricks, something happening — about every three seconds,” Feld Grossman adds. “You have to be faster than the pace of people's attention to keep them engaged. That's what we're experts in, and that's what we're passionate about.”
The people behind the shows are the greatest asset Feld Entertainment has, according to Feld Grossman, who leads a team of more than 2,000 global employees and 450 full-time corporate staff.
“The single greatest enabler of innovation is creating an environment where people feel they can take risks,” Feld Grossman says. “My job is not to find all these innovations. Most of these things I couldn't take personal credit for. But to create an environment where people surface ideas and feel comfortable doing that and taking risks and seeking opportunities — that's the most important thing that I do as a leader.”
