William Wright Powell

Advance Professional

The circus has always depended on two kinds of people: those who create the spectacle and those who make certain there is an audience to see it.

From the days of P.T. Barnum, the professionals working in advance of the show — planning tours, negotiating markets, developing advertising and publicity, securing sponsorships and, ultimately, selling tickets — have occupied an essential if less visible place in the circus business. The equation is a simple one: The circus is both art and commerce. Without an audience, there is no show.

The group honored as the Advance Professionals represents generations of men and women who built careers on that side of the business. Many went on to become entrepreneurs, agents, producers, marketing and public-relations executives, venue managers and leaders in professional sports, media, ticketing, concert promotion, theme parks, fairs, cultural institutions and nonprofit organizations.

What connects them is the education they received in the circus — an industry that demands creativity, adaptability and an understanding of audiences, often while moving from one city to the next.

William Wright Powell was one of them. Unlike many who entered the business through marketing or venue management, however, Powell began his career on the other side of the curtain.

A Childhood in the Circus

Powell grew up in a circus family. His mother, Gee Gee Engesser, and his father, Bill Powell Sr., were accomplished circus artists, and his childhood was spent around performers, animals, rigging, concessions and the daily work required to put on a show.

Before he was 18, Powell had already accumulated a résumé unusual even by circus standards. He assisted with and trained animals, performed as Congo the Almost Human Gorilla, presented an elephant, leopard and cougar act, and played the comic “stooge” in Scott’s Unrideable Mule act.

He also worked behind the scenes as a stage technician in circus, motion-picture and live-theater productions and sold food and merchandise concessions.

The experience gave him an unusually broad education in how live entertainment worked — from the performance itself to the mechanics of staging it and the economics of selling it.

Powell was also among a relatively small number of circus children of his generation to attend a university. After completing his education, he returned to the industry, this time concentrating on the business of live entertainment.

Building Markets for Live Entertainment

Powell spent multiple decades with Feld Entertainment, ultimately serving as vice president of Event Marketing and Sales. In that role, he was responsible for bringing major family-entertainment and motorsports productions to markets across the United States, Mexico, Spain and South America.

Over the course of his career, events under his management sold more than 200 million tickets, with some establishing attendance records that remained in place decades later.

Early in his tenure, Powell played a central role in Feld Entertainment’s expansion into Latin America and Spain. He helped pioneer the introduction of Disney on Ice, Feld Motorsports and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey to Mexico, Spain and eight South American countries.

The expansion opened substantial new international markets for Feld’s productions and established operations that continued long after their introduction.

One of the most striking results came in Mexico City in 1996. Amusement Business magazine recognized the Ringling engagement there as the year’s largest internationally attended live event, drawing approximately 450,000 people. Its attendance exceeded that of appearances by U2, Michael Jackson and other major entertainment attractions.

Powell’s work evolved along with the economics of the live-event industry. Beginning in 2014, he helped guide Feld Entertainment’s use of analytics in ticket pricing. The company’s South team, which he led, became an early adopter of variable and dynamic pricing strategies based on the economic principle of price elasticity of demand — adjusting ticket prices in response to consumer demand and market conditions.

During his career, Powell also served on six occasions as brand manager for Feld productions and managed event marketing for Monster Energy Supercross, while serving on the property’s strategic committee.

Taking the Business Into the Classroom

Powell later helped translate his professional experience into formal education.

He co-created the curriculum for Live Entertainment Marketing (STPE 404) at the University of South Carolina’s College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, bringing the economics and practical realities of touring entertainment into an academic setting.

He has also guest lectured at Ibero Universidad in Mexico City and spoken before industry associations and marketing conferences.

The teaching reflected a principle that had defined his own career: Live entertainment may begin with creativity, but sustaining it requires an understanding of markets, audiences, pricing, promotion and the business behind the performance.

Service to the Live-Event Industry

Powell’s career has also included extensive service to the venue and live-entertainment industries.

He served as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Association of Venue Managers Foundation and has participated in IAVM industry-affairs and sector committees, as well as its pandemic-era COVID task force.

In 2020, IAVM presented Powell with its Joseph M. Anzivino Distinguished Allied Award, an honor recognizing exceptional service to the venue-management profession. At the time, only 25 people in the organization’s century-long history had received the distinction.

A decade earlier, in 2010, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art honored Powell as a “Power Behind the Scenes”during its annual Circus Celebrity Awards.

His community work extended beyond the entertainment industry. For more than two decades, Powell created and managed the Tampa General Hospital Foundation’s annual Night at the Circus, an event that raised more than $3 million for neonatal and children’s care.

Preserving — and Reframing — Circus History

Powell eventually turned increasing attention toward the preservation and public interpretation of the art form in which he had grown up.

As chairman and chief executive of the Circus Ring of Fame Foundation in Sarasota, Fla., he led an organizational restructuring that expanded the board of trustees, established new bylaws and committees, strengthened the organization’s finances and created an online Global Circus Advisory Council designed to broaden participation by members of the international circus community.

The Foundation also developed a new digital archive featuring more than 160 multimedia biographies of Circus Ring of Fame inductees, transforming what had largely been a collection of physical plaques into an accessible historical resource.

In 2022, Powell co-wrote and produced the first television and streaming special devoted to the Circus Ring of Fame Awards.

During 2022 and 2023, he developed and supervised another effort to connect the Ring’s physical history with its digital archive: the installation of approximately 170 codes on inductee plaques surrounding St. Armands Circle Park in Sarasota. Visitors could scan a plaque with a mobile phone and immediately reach the biography, photographs and historical material associated with the person it honored.

The project effectively turned the Ring of Fame into an interactive cultural exhibit for the millions of people who visit St. Armands Circle.

Powell has also worked with the St. Armands merchants association, the business improvement district, the City of Sarasota and other community interests on plans involving the future redevelopment of Circle Park and the continued presence of the Circus Ring of Fame there.

“Circus Is Art”

In 2024, Powell began advocating for a broader change in how circus is presented to the public.

He developed the concept “Circus Is Art,” initially as a communications idea and later as the central theme of the 2024 Circus Ring of Fame live production and television program.

The premise challenged the traditional vocabulary surrounding circus performance. Rather than describing performers simply as “acts” executing “tricks,” Powell argued that accomplished circus artists should be understood in much the same way as musicians, dancers, actors and other highly trained performing artists.

“In order to change the perception of circus, we need to change the conversation,” Powell said.

It was an idea rooted in a lifetime spent on both sides of the circus business.

Powell began as a circus child — working with animals, performing, selling concessions and helping backstage. He later spent decades studying audiences, developing markets, setting ticket prices and promoting some of the world’s largest touring entertainment productions. In retirement from the commercial side of the industry, his attention turned increasingly toward preserving its history and advocating for its future.

His career reflects the tradition represented by the Advance Professionals: the people whose names were seldom the largest ones on the poster, but whose work helped make certain there was an audience in the seats when the lights went down and the show began.