Welcome to the Ensemble Christmas Special! As we approach the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the past twelve months and look towards the future.

On the production front it’s been an excellent year, with 12 Olivier nominations for our productions including five for our shows at Trafalgar Studios.

Ken, Kelli and Ruthie reprised their roles in a record-breaking, sold-out run of The King and I at Theatre Orb in Tokyo to be followed by dates across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Now back in the UK, we have had to put on extra matinees due to demand. The Rocky Horror Show finished its UK tour with a healthy profit for investors and exciting future plans for the show, including South Africa, New York and Germany. Our new partnership with Jonathan Church and his team will strengthen production capacity helping us to deliver even more content and after a very successful partnership with the National Theatre on Nine Night we collaborated again on A Taste of Honey at Trafalgar Studios.

Next year, we will be presenting a slate of exciting productions and are particularly excited about our growing partnership with the National Theatre where we are co-producing the great War Horse in Australia and Asia, plus commissioning new work with HOME in Manchester and developing a major musical in London.

We forged ahead with our plans to develop a group ticketing business when we acquired the leading ticket agency London Theatre Direct; one of the largest providers of theatre tickets in the West End and a pioneer of online ticketing. In April, we were joined by Luke Shires Marketing and TE and Stagecoach staff joined forces as we moved into our lovely new office space in Woking.

Trafalgar Releasing remains the leading global distributor of event cinema into 100+ countries. This year’s highlights included winning the 2019 Screen Award for Event Cinema Campaign of the Year for The King & I at the London Palladium, BTS breaking the 2018 record of largest event cinema release, and Metallica becoming the largest rock release ever. Going forward there is strong growth potential globally – with the under-developed US market set to overtake the UK to become the largest gross box office market for Trafalgar Releasing. Earlier this month, we also welcomed event cinema specialist More2Screen to the Trafalgar Entertainment family.

2019 saw some excellent gains for Stagecoach including opening 200 schools and classes globally and achieving a 15% year on year growth in international student numbers. There was really strong new franchisee growth in Berlin, Canada and Western Australia with exciting plans for US and Canadian expansion in 2020. Stagecoach students were in increasing demand across TV, film and advertising throughout 2019 and there were two wonderful summer events, the Summer Showcase production of The Sound of Music and Dance the Dream at Disneyland Paris.

Trafalgar Studios was named Best Entertainment Company for The London Prestige Awards. We’re also very proud of the work we’ve done this year making Trafalgar Studios more environmentally friendly including removing single use plastic from our bars. We will continue to scope out potential acquisitions in the UK and are in exclusive negotiations to operate the Olympia Theatre in West London. There has also been significant progress in developing our Asia-Pacific network with opportunities for venue acquisition and the concept of pop-up theatres.

On the cinemas front, the Chiswick Cinema which opens late 2020 is the first of a series of boutique club cinemas in London villages. There’s plenty to look forward to in 2020.

I’d like to thank everyone at Barings Alternative Investments for their on-going support and encouragement as our majority shareholder. Barings will really help advance the company’s future growth and their global reach and existing investments in media and live entertainment companies around the world offer us a huge opportunity to realise our ambitions both in the UK and globally.

Make sure you watch our corporate Christmas card below and then click here to see our 2019 Moments.

Finally, thank you to every one of you for your continued commitment and hard work throughout 2019. You are all part of the Trafalgar Entertainment family and every single person matters and makes a difference. I’d like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Warmest wishes
Rosemary