Guy Laliberté: Cirque du Soleil’s clown turned CEO

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An astronaut floats through the International Space Station. He's tanned, he's bald, he picks up the satellite phone and starts chatting. On the other end of the line is a stadium full of screaming fans. Bono Did we mention the astronaut is wearing a bright red clown nose? Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC. Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million onto a billion.

My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor. In this episode we've got someone a little bit unusual. This week's billionaire was suggested by listener Keith, who emailed us to say I think the founder of Cirque de Soleil would be fascinating. That man is Guy La Liberté, the fire breathing, still walking clown billionaire. Man who reinvented the greatest show on earth.

That's right. That would be the circus, by the way, for people who don't know. And I have to confessing I have never been. I've seen some footage of it, but you have? Yeah, so I went when I was a very small child, I think it must have been six or seven, and my mind was blown. I don't think I've ever recovered from watching twelve topless men dressed as fish trapeze each other off stilts. I don't know. It's just Honestly, it is a sensory extravaganza.

He basically reinvented the circus and turned it into quite an artistic high art concept. Exactly. I mean the costumes, the makeup, the generous that it's much more like a sophisticated psychedelic Venetian masquerade as opposed to the circa shows of the past which were, you know, predicated on animal cruelty and, you know, had that real kind of hokey, sawdust, peaty barnum esque feel.

Okay, that's a brilliant description I have to say. But let's talk about Ghee himself, a larger than life character. He owes his billion dollar empire where it started with busking. Yeah, he sleeps between one and six hours a night. He gets bar on power naps. He's a high stakes poker player, literally and in business. And he's also renowned for throwing extravagant parties filled with A listers and acrobats.

Probably why I've never been. He sees himself as this is interesting this as made up of two halves, a creative and a capitalist. So how did a busker create perhaps what is the biggest show on earth? Guilla Liberté was born in 1959 in Quebec City, Canada. He came from a middle class family. His mother was a nurse. She loved playing piano.

He describes his father as a PR guy, a wheeler dealer, who had a knack for organising parties that would make a client sign the contract, and his father was also someone who, according to Guy, got broke so many times because he was a gambler. They had a big extended family of over 120 people, and every weekend he remembers them having a 48-hour party, kids asleep on the floor, adults having fun, listening to music, singing, playing cards.

And like many of our billionaires, Guy showed a flair for business early. At five he was selling baseball cards in the schoolyard. On the creative side he learnt to play an accordion, important that, which he found in his father's closet. And then during a trip to the US he visited the circus.

Now this wasn't any old circus. It was descended from this legendary nineteenth century show known as the Greatest Show on Earth, which was founded by the legendary showman Pete Barnum, and Guy was fascinated by what he saw. A few years later, he'd be further inspired reading the biography of Pete Barnum himself. But at the age of ten his parents sent Guy to boarding school. It was an incredibly difficult environment, uh that he said killed the soul of some of the kids around him.

His teenage years were then driven by rage. He said, I wasn't able to see the beauty and I was just seeing the darkness. He became a troublemaker, he was kicked out of several schools, he fought with his parents, they wanted him to follow a traditional path, you know, as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. And you know, remember this was the nineteen seventies.

Yeah, I the generation gap had never felt wider. We just had the summer of love in the late sixties. So at fourteen he ran away from home and when he returned ten days later, he told his parents this. He said, Let's make a deal. I will continue my school You pay for my lunch, my clothes, but I want to have the right to keep my hair long and work to earn my own money.

I like how he drove his parents a hard bargain. So he earned this money by busking on the streets of Quebec playing the accordion. Now what really drove him was this desire to travel. So at 18 he decided to pack up his accordion and busk his way across the He had enough money to buy open tickets for a year and about fifty dollars in cash in his pocket. He visited fellow musicians that he'd met while busking and friends of friends, and while in London he slept on a park bench in Hyde Park.

Decades later, whenever he'd visit the city, he would pay three thousand pounds a night to stay at a penthouse overlooking Hyde Park just to remind him of how far he'd come. God, I wonder if he deliberately picked the highest floor just so he could look all the way down and think that used to be me. Yeah. So in one of these European adventures, he fell in with groups of circus performers and they taught him how to juggle, how to still walk.

the art of fire breathing. You know, these are all kind of skills the average hitchhiker doesn't learn, I think. I've done a bit of fire breathing. Have you? It's actually not as hard as it looks. Yeah. You just take a big mouthful of flammable liquid and spit it out of a flame. That's pretty much all there is to it. Dare I ask, how did you learn why did you learn to fire?

I thought there was some guy doing it at at some kind of event and I just said, Can I have a go? May Alcohol may have been involved. Anyway, um so he said, Yeah, you just take a c don't swallow it. And spit it all out. So you've got to you know blow really hard so you get rid of all. You don't want some left in your mouth, otherwise that'll sort of catch fire. Obviously don't try fire breathing at home without an expert on hand and even then think twice.

But there we go. You know, I didn't I didn't pursue it. Right. There's there's a world in which S Simon was the UK's greatest fire breather, but sadly he works for the BBC now and for us instead. I mean Guy eventually returned to Canada in the late nineteen seventies. He had all these skills in his pocket.

Back to work with something of a bump in a way, because his dad gets him a job at a factory and he's starting to make a bit of money playing poker backgammon and he said a little bit of everything. I love competition. Then he gets a new job at an electrical dam, but just three days in there's a union strike, so while he waits for the strike to end, he heads to the small city of Bay Saint Paul in Quebec because he heard there was a cool youth hostel there.

And when he arrives he sees an old school friend, Daniel Gautier. Now Daniel will go on to be the co founder of Cirque de Soleil. There's another person who Guill meets at the hostel, a man called Gilles Saint Croix. Now Gilles had been part of the bread and puppet theatre in Vermont. uh politically radical puppets show formed during the anti war protest of the Vietnam War.

Ju starts a stiltwalking theatre group and Guy joins and he quickly rises up the ranks to become one of the group's leaders who's responsible for organizing the shows and fundraising. But Guy was not a fan of the Canadian winter, notoriously cold. So in between summers working in Bayson Pour, he travelled to warmer climes. He visited Hawaii for the first time in nineteen seventy nine, and while watching the sunset he came up with the name Sop du Soleil. Say so good night. It is a very good name.

It's re I think, you know, it was one of those ones where ge getting the name right I think really mattered. Circ Circus of the Sun. So we're in nineteen eighty two now and Guy, Daniel and Gilles organise a street festival called La Fête Forine. Think free love, circus performers and apparently acid dealing clowns. I'm not sure how much I want to see a clown on acid, I have to say.

Yes, exactly. I mean they're quite scary as they are. W you know if you throw L S D into that and it's a altogether more sinister proposition. Anyway, this festival gave them the ambition to create their own circus off the street under a big top. But it would be a new kind of circus with artistic integrity and very important no performing animals.

And they got their big break in nineteen eighty four, when the Canadian government were looking to spend money on cultural events to celebrate Canada's four hundred and fiftieth anniversary. So Guy pitches the idea of a travelling circus. The government are convinced and they give him a one million dollar contract.

Right. So they take the best of the circus, jugglers, acrobats, clowns, etcetera, and combine it with the sets, the sounds, the costumes of musical theatre. And so the first Cirque de Soleil is born. Guy at this time is just twenty five years old.

To begin with, the show comprised of ten acts under a blue and yellow big top that seated eight hundred people, and Guy was actually doing the fire breathing himself. He describes himself as one of the best fire breathers in the world at this time. That's quite the claim. And they started out with a fifteen city tour in Quebec and Guy said that his show made his mum realize that this was a serious thing that they were doing. With my father it took like

Two more years. I'm sure it's nobody's middle class dad's dream of seeing your son set up a circus out. Running off to the circus is actually a kind of meme. It's a threat. It wasn't plain sailing though, Guy said it was only with the courage and arrogance of youth that we survived. The big top tent even fell down on the first day. They had trouble getting people into the shows, all sorts of problems.

So their first year was also plagued with financial troubles. The money from the government took time to come in, so they needed to cover the gap with loans. But Guy found convincing a bank much more difficult. He went to see every banker in a hundred mile radius but was told no the bankers explained, We need collateral. We just don't know what we'll do with a trapeze with tender or hot dog stand if you fail.

Collateral of course is that thing the security that the bank has that if you can't pay me back I can seize the assets which you've used my money to buy. And they normally prefer say property. Not twenty clowns. Eventually a small community bank, which mainly financed unions, did give him a loan. But to survive they needed to make more money.

Now, because of the cold weather, they could only really perform for half the year in Canada, so Guy realized they had to head south. Their first attempt outside of Canada was Niagara Falls, with millions of tourists visiting these famous waterfalls every month. Surely this would be perfect. Uh no. They hadn't done any market research to understand that the average visitor at Niagara Falls is there for less than forty-five minutes. They go there, get the gram these days, and they're off.

So the first night they sold just ten tickets, the second night sixty five. Remember Ghee had seventy five people on the payroll, so they had to shut the show. At this point there were seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in deficit, but somehow Guy had managed to convince the bank to go over their credit line by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he convinced his suppliers to postpone repayment by months.

And when Guy was asked why he thought they did this, he reasoned they loved us, they trusted us, I think they believed in us. I think uh I hope that Guy gives some credit to that banker who allowed him to go over his credit line.'Cause the a bank can shut you down at any time when they decide. Actually, you know what, we're foreclosing on your loan. And for them to keep going w with a circus it's just not something that's usually in a bank's DNA.

It must have been it must have been a banker's kind of, you know, secret love of the circus, who knows?

But that trust proved well placed because fortunately Cirque du Soleil proved incredibly popular. It was unlike anything the public had seen before. To me it it looks more like a kind of a very lurid film with lots of colour and lighting and whatever, like the Baslerman film Moulin Rouge. That's kind of what I p picture Circle Soleil looking like.

I think in spirit, maybe what it's closest to, at least in my impression of having watched it, is a movie like Fantasia. Okay. Where things don't necessarily make sense and there is a kind of overarching narrative, but there's also a lot of very weird stuff thrown in and it's all incredibly

visually captivating. And also obviously there's loads of stunts and incredible performance feats in it. You know, we're talking stilt walkers, people balancing themselves upside down on people's faces. You know, it it's a real feast of the senses. Uh it's not like that.

original music as well. So the soundtracks are a really big deal. But I do think that one of the things about Certiusole is that it is almost entirely nonverbal. So you don't need the characters. As far as I remember, nobody speaks actual English in the show. Right. It's all kind of acted or mimed or just expressed through the power of dance. So it's very universal.

That's really interesting. So you could do this anywhere. There's no kind of translation problem. In nineteen eighty six they got a lucrative tour of in Vancouver and finally they were able to pay everyone back who'd backed them. And then they got their big shot to make it outside of Canada.

Guy managed to book Cirque du Soleil as the opening act for the nineteen eighty seven Los Angeles Festival, and he invests the entire savings into getting there. He said, I bet everything on that one night, if we failed, there was no cash for gas to come home. And he packed the show with celebrities. So Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who we also covered on Good Bad Billionaire, were there. They were s executives from film studios. This was their big moment.

It's incredible that'cause he's clearly a very skillful promoter and that takes real charm, bravery, courage. Gotta be a gambler, but it pays off. It's a big hit. Hollywood falls in love with it. Michael Jackson apparently came every month in disguise. Anguille makes a deal with Columbia Pictures, a movie about some of the Cirque de Soleil characters, but on the day before they were due to sign this deal with Columbia,

Columbia throw a party but seek Guy and Daniel in a corner out of the sight of celebs and he says they just wanted to lock up our story and our brand name and walk around like they own Cirque de Soleil. I walk right out of the party, called my law, and told him to get me out of the deal. Why? Quite punchy to turn your back on Hollywood in that way. Yeah.

And in a way that is a characteristic of some of our billionaires. They just like turn on their heel and say, This isn't right for me, this isn't what I want. I would say ninety five percent of all business people if they get a big payday like a c deal with Columbia Pictures, say, Well, this is better than when we started but no, it's that ambition saying this isn't perfect.

And it paid off because he keeps the circus independent and he books a big US tour and by the end of nineteen eighty seven they made a profit of over one and a half million dollars. Guy and Daniel had a fifty fifty partnership though, so Guy isn't quite a millionaire yet.

Over the next few years, Ski kept the circus touring. It grew in popularity. In nineteen ninety they left North America for the first time, touring shows in London, Paris, Japan. Within a year he hired a second cast, one for North America, one for Europe.

But Guy dreamt of a permanent base for the circus and he sets his sights on Las Vegas. Now at the time Vegas was not what it was today. So you know We used to have people having big residencies there like Adele or you know, Prince or people like that.

Exactly. I mean it wasn't really kind of seen as the home of entertainment in the way that Well back in the there was a there was a period wasn't there when you know Elvis was around, Frank Sinatra was around, there was that vibe going on, but it that uh that was quite a long time ago by this point.

But there was one act which in a way probably made them th you know, their man the hotels think it could work'cause they've s famous act called Siegfried and Roy. Now you probably don't remember this. I don't remember. Finally in the driving seat. Okay, Siegfried and Roy were these high camp magicians and illusionists. who would do these very, very high profile stunts, they would make tigers disappear and all that and they were often pictured with a tiger. White tiger, am I right?

Exactly, you have seen it. You do remember. They were a big deal in the nineteen eighties, I can tell you. They were selling out sixteen hundred seats every night on the Las Vegas Strip. So Guy starts talking with Caesars Palace and they do a development deal. They each put in$300,000 just to create the concept. This new show was dark, it was moody and for Caesars it was a little bit too out there, let's put it one way.

When Caesars phoned Key to tell him the deer was off, he raged and screamed for three hours and he said I don't think I ever in my life had done so many hours of stepmaster in a row. I like this image of him on a stepmaster screaming his lungs out. He gets a call from another Las Vegas mogul, Steve Wynne. Now, Steve Wynne is Las Vegas royalty. He's a billionaire in his own right.

And he'd built the Mirage Hotel for six hundred and thirty million dollars in nineteen eighty nine. At that time it was the world's most expensive resort, and it was in the Mirage that Siegfried and Roy actually performed. Steve was opening a new hotel called Treasure Island and he was looking for a new entertainment act to fill it.

So Steve made a deal with Guy. He would build a theatre for thirty six million, exclusively for Cirque du Soleil. Guy would cover the show's costs, which totaled twelve million that first year. And they called this show Mister. The first performance was on Christmas Day nineteen ninety three and it was a massive hit. It went gangbusters. Within a year, Cirque de Soleil's revenues were thirty million dollars.

Think about costs around twelve million dollars, so profits for the year somewhere around eighteen million. So even if he's giving a bit to Steve, Wynne and Daniel, Ghee must be worth several million dollars by this point. So Guy is a millionaire in his mid-30s.

So let's take a moment to find out what's been going on in his personal life. It's around this time that he starts dating Ritzia Moreira, a Brazilian model in her late teens whom he meets on a beach. So Guy is a millionaire and he's in love, so what's next?

Well Cirque de Soleil's growth was outstanding throughout the nineteen nineties. Across the world they were adding more shows, more tours. In Las Vegas in just two years, revenue from Mr. jumped from thirty million to one hundred and ten million dollars. and in a way reflected what was going on in live entertainment at the time. Big shows, big tours.

You think about big musicals like Phantom of the Opera, like The Lion King, you know, musicians selling out entire football stadiums. This is when I think live entertainment became a juggernaut in its own set.

We had and remember we'd had Live Aid in nineteen eighty five, so this idea of these huge kind of global shows I think were really taking off. But by nineteen ninety eight, Vegas, Steve Wynne, wanted more. Yeah, that's right. He asked Guy to open another resident show at the brand new Bellagio Hotel.

And this show was to be called Oh and it was water themed. So they built a special theatre with a twenty-five foot deep one point five million gallon swimming pool, which cost them a hundred million dollars. I mean, this is an enormous amount of Kind of like um Gladiator, you know that and the Gladiator sequel when they filled the amphitheatre full of water. It kinda got that vibe, hasn't it?

And if you actually look at the trailer for the show on YouTube, you can see acrobats diving off stadium ramps into the water, like, you know, choreograph synchronized swimming. It is a real show. So Steve has spent millions betting the house on Guy. He must have had tons of confidence in this guy to deliver. Well, yes, gambling uh is a bit of a theme in this episode and this gamble paid off. Within five years, it was the top grossing show in Las Vegas.

And accounted for a hundred million dollars of Balladshares one point one billion annual revenue. And if y if you think that's up against gambling, that's quite a big chunk. I mean it truly is astounding. And also arguably less life ruining than gambling. Yeah. Now Guy saw the success of their permanent homes in Vegas and he wanted to replicate it, but instead of Vegas, Sin City, he heads to the most magical place on

That's Disney. In nineteen ninety-six he made a twelve-year deal with Disney CEO Michael Eisner. The La Nuba show opened in Disney World, Orlando, in a custom-built fifty million dollar theatre. But Guy remained in control, Michael Eisner once said, If I'd been able to buy Cirque du Soleil, I would have bought it. When asked why Guy wouldn't sell to a big company like Disney, he responded, I prefer to reinvest my profits into the business rather than see them disappear into pension funds.

I mean it's quite a statement. Yeah, you don't turn down the mouse very often. Not many people have turned down the mouse.

Yeah, the house of when the house of mass comes knocking, you tend to open the door. Disney, I mean, I've got this cutesy image. They are a say ruthless in the nicest possible way, um, shareholder focused organisation and they're all about sort of creating returns for their shareholders. So if you get into bed with the mouse, you know who's in charge, put it that way.

Yeah, it's interesting as well because even though Guy hasn't really talked about Sir du Soleil as being part of an IP franchise, in effect that is essentially what this is. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's interesting you could trademark the name, but you couldn't trademark what people are doing, right? But he manages to keep that brand intact uh and keep ownership of it.

Yeah, and by the end of the nineteen nineties, Ghee was employing a thousand three hundred clowns, acrobats, and dancers, and payroll alone was eighty million dollars. And because these performers came from twenty-three different countries Cirque du Soleil, and I love this kind of fat, used twenty-seven shades of rubber for their masks and artificial bold heads so they could blend in with their performance skin colours. So truly a kind of united colours of Benettin approach to the circus.

Yeah, or um the way that um Rihanna approached her Fenty Beauty range as well. At this point he was given the opportunity to take Cirque de Soleil public, that means sell shares in the business. But he resisted, explaining to CBS News. The idea of giving quarterly reports is one thing I cannot live with. The second thing is that it will restrain us and for fifteen years we've been doing things that make no business sense.

And that is true. Once you go public, you've got shareholders who expect an update on how the business is doing every three months. It's quite an undertaking. It's quite a commitment. Yeah, and presumably these are the people who would not be pleased if you say things like the next show will be themed around water and we're going to build a million dollar swimming pool to make it happen.

They would want to question every single investment, every artistic direction you were taking. It's not the kind of thing that a creative person wants to have to deal with. Well in nineteen ninety nine his co founder and Cirque's president and COO Daniel Gautier decided to leave. So Daniel said that he decided to leave the Cirque. to raise his family. He said my choice was made on strictly personal grounds and I wish these reasons to remain private.

is a big split because for decades Guy and Daniel had lived in symbiosis, they say, without even needing to speak to understand each other. And although it was an amical split, Guy admitted to having bawled, and now Guy had to find the money to buy Daniel out if he wanted to keep the company.

Reportedly he needed four hundred and eighty-three million dollars, so he turned to a syndicate of banks, and Daniel, on his part, walked away with, in his own words, more money than I could ever spend, than my children could ever spend, than their children could ever spend. Be careful about that. We've seen in some of our billionaires. You'd be amazed what the kids and the grandkids can get through over time. All it takes is a few super yachts. Yeah.

So now Ghee he wants it to be a mega brand and sets out about making all sorts of of deals. So things like merchandising and licensing, you can get sectors like wallpaper, teapots, jackets, a swatch. You've got big ticket sponsors, American Express, ATT, you've got a multimedia division, Cirque de Soleil Images, producing films, including one for IMAX, so rolling out the brand across as much as you possibly can.

I mean and this is a really quite unusual I would say for what's essentially a theatre production. Yeah. You know, I really struggle to think of any kind of theater show that has kind of conquered the world in the same way so. Yeah. These things are sometimes risky. Sometimes you can spread a brand too thin, but it's working, it's not doing any harm to the value of this franchise. No. No, by two thousand and four Forbes valued Cirque du Soleil at one point two billion dollars.

Zo Gee is officially a billionaire. He owns the lot, right? That year Time magazine also named him one of the most influential people in the world and probably the first clown to make the list. Not the last. Being your mum has taught. I think that's a good idea. Join me Namulanta Combo for season six of my award. Podcast. Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

So he's officially in the billionaire leagues. He's also in a new relationship. After ten years and three children with Ritzio, they broke up. He was reportedly briefly romantically linked to Neo Micampo. But then he also starts dating model Claudia Barilla and they have two children together. They never marry as Claudia says Guy doesn't believe in marriage, an unconventional clown to the end.

So he's got a billion dollars and a new girlfriend. He also said, I don't understand working all your life and dying with tons of money in the bank. So in two thousand four he appoints a different Daniel, Daniel Lamar, to take the lead at Cirque de Soleil. That means he can step back from the day to day operational responsibilities.

Focus a bit more on the creative side and also frees up his time so he can spend some of that money. And what is the quickest way to spend a billion dollars apart from launching rockets into space? Gambling. How to lose more money than you can ever earn. So it all began one night in 2006 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. He asked to join a poker game, but because he's a beginner, no one would let him in. So he waxed down fifty grand on the table, money talks, and he got the seat.

He told a friend the other players are gonna think we're a bunch of drunk French frogs his words, not mine, and that they're going to take all our money. But He walked away with all the chips and just a year later he finished fourth in the World Poker Tour, winning seven hundred thousand dollars. Life changing to some, probably not for him, nevertheless. He would have been pleased by that. But I think it just demonstrates his risk taking tendencies. Um and also competitiveness.

Yeah, he wanted to play backgammon, he wanted to play poker, he wanted to play all these things. Most of our billionaires have been gamblers of one kind or another. Guy is not the world's best gambler, it has to be said. He's often referred to as the biggest loser in online poker history. Between two thousand and six and two thousand and nine, he reportedly lost around thirty million dollars online. And he's not just spending his money at the card table either.

No, he likes a party. He's renowned for throwing big, extravagant ones. Imagine hundreds, sometimes thousands of guests. A-listers, acrobats, partying all night, all weekend. I'm really getting a very hedonistic feel to this. I I kinda wanna go. Don't know if you should admit that on air similar. Guy is known for his attention to detail and decadence. Guests get the best of everything. In particular, his Grand Prix parties in Montreal where they have the Canadian Grand Prix are world famous.

One of Cirque du Soleil's most memorable events began life when he invited George Harrison to one of these parties, George Harrison being one of the Beetles. So that invite resulted in the Beethos Circuit-Soleil collaboration, the first major project Bringing the surviving Beatles recordings together in a new way, and Guy would replicate this with shows centred around Elvis, Michael Jackson, even Lionel Messi.

I can't understand what a show centered around a footballer would actually look like, but you know, I I'll have to look that one up. Guy's partying was also the centre of controversy when Ian Halperin published an unauthorized biography, and that book contained details of Guy's debauchery and excess that Guy took issue with. The author and publisher later issued a public apology as part of the terms of an out of court settlement with Ian Halperin saying that he was a great admirer of Guy.

But it wasn't all parties and poker. Guy did spend his money on more philanthropic causes. In two thousand and seven he created the One Drop Foundation. Now this is a nonprofit that focuses on providing sustainable access to safe water and sanitation worldwide, and he pledged to cover the seventy-five million dollar operating costs. for the first twenty five years. He also had a, let's put it this way, rather novel way of promoting this charity.

Yep, going back to where we met him on this episode, in two thousand nine he became the first Canadian space tourist launched in a Russian rocket ship. The trip cost thirty five million dollars. and was, he said, all in aid of raising awareness for water issues on earth. He wore the red clown nose inside his astronaut seat for launch and spent twelve days in the International Space Station. And while he was up there, he chatted to Bono live on stage.

during a YouTube performance in Tampa, Florida. I can't imagine being in the audience for this and being like, Play Beautiful Day and all of a sudden this bold guy with a clown nose comes on. Yes. Um, he'd been feeling bad emotionally, lacking a personal challenge, and travelling to space apparently brought Ghee a sense of freedom he desperately needed.

The training was intense but it gave him, you know, back to basics really, a sense of simplicity. I was in a compound, he says, where I had to make my own bed, cook for myself. I was riding to school on a bicycle instead of driving a fast car. So simple pleasures. And after the journey he published a photo book called Gaia with proceeds going to one drop.

Guy claimed this was a business trip, but Canada's tax court unfortunately disagreed with this. A decade later they ruled it was a personal expense, so he couldn't claim any tax breaks. Now, I don't know if going to space is the best way to raise awareness for life on earth. Yeah, well... I can see the I can see the thought behind it, but

But they do often say, don't they, when you look from space back at Earth, you think, Oh my god, this precious little green blue dot is got everything who's ever lived, every memory and most of it is covered by water. And so you do get that kind of sense of gosh, water's important. Um That is true. From from space. I mean the other thing is that billionaires seem to absolutely love going up in space and I'm not sure why.

I think there's two things on this. One it's kind of they've conquered the earth, you know in their own way. Where's the next frontier? And second Uh they're the only ones who can afford it, as they It's true. I mean and also if you want bragging rights, they've all got cars, they've all got planes. They've all got private jets.

private jets, you know, but it's nice to be able to drop into the conversation with your fellow billionaires. Oh yeah, you're in space lately What did you think of the way the Earth looked from space? But back on Earth, things weren't running that smoothly at the circus. Circ had had a couple of expensive news shows flop, you know, like a hundred million dollars per show, panned by the critics and the public.

In two thousand and eight, despite having always prized control above everything, Ghee sold twenty percent of Circ to two Dubai based investors. for an estimated five hundred million. And he explained, I sold to them to have a partner who was heavily expanding in real estate, but from the moment I got to the cheque to the month afterwards, everything was totally different.

so I was just left with the money, and the reason why things were totally different was because Uh the two thousand and eight recession, the financial crisis had hit, had a huge impact on Dubai. So basically he thought that his partner was going to help him expand around the world, but in fact his partner's got hit by the financial recession. So he's got his money but not the kind of partner he thought he was going to have essentially. And actually the next few years

saw further declines in Circ's fortune. That's right. From twenty thirteen to twenty fourteen revenue dropped from one billion to eight hundred and fifty million and by twenty fifteen Guy was ready to just let go. He sold his majority stake in Cert du Soleil. To American, Chinese and Canadian investors, and he said the sale liberated him.

Well, it also put an estimated one point five billion dollars in his bank account. And the sale was well timed. A Cirque was hit hard by the COVID pandemic, of course. Shows were cancelled, dozens of shows, um it was nine hundred million dollars in debt. Since the pandemic, Cirque has begun to recover, but it's nothing like the heady days of profit when Guy was actually in charge.

So what is Guy up to nowadays? He's busy with an investment company. He has a vast real estate portfolio and art collection. He also splits his time between homes in Montreal, Ibiza, and Hawaii. And he also owns a private island in French Polynesia. The private island, that's the billionaire bingo card filled. Exactly. Yeah. You want your Thunderbirds Island if you're a billionaire. Actually if you want a taste of this you can rent it out this island. It'll only cost you a million euros a week.

Chump change. And it was on this private island that Guy was detained by police for growing cannabis in twenty nineteen, although he was later released without charge after stating it was for personal use only. He's also still involved with OneDrop and is known for hosting incredible parties. And on his Instagram he describes himself as, guess what, a DJ. Good for him. So

That is the story of Guy La Liberté brought up to date. And now we're going to judge him on a bunch of categories, things like wealth, philanthropy, power, legacy, etcetera. And we always start with wealth, because that's the name of the game on this podcast. Um not near the top of the tree, but boy knows how to spend it. Private island, yacht, art collection, big parties, big gambler. I mean you couldn't get a more cookie cutter billionaire spender.

No, you can his wealth peaked actually in the early twenty tens when Guy was reportedly worth around two point six billion dollars. So pretty entry level on the billionaire stakes, but knows knows how to do it. But what I do appreciate is that, you know, we always have this conversation around when would you walk away with the money? And it seems like Guy decided to walk away with the money because he wanted to live a nice life, which I can personally get on board with.

I would have done it much, much earlier. First search is the first one. Million dollars you'd come to my office and find a w a chair spinning around and no sign of me. And just a red nose just Setting on the seat. That's a great image. I'm gonna do that. Well, I think for wealth, I think a seven out of ten for me.

Yeah, I'm gonna go six for this. Two for absolute real wealth, eight for how or nine for how he spends it in sense of fun and whatever. So six. Right. It's five and a half, but six anyway. Okay. Philanthropy. Pretty good, I think. Yeah, I mean... Good. That's not bad.

Sometimes space launches, as we all know, don't work out, so it could have gone wrong for him. He also managed to combine his love of gambling and parties with philanthropy. So he introduced this event called The big one for one drop, a one million dollar buy-in poker tournament at the World Series of Poker, with proceeds benefiting the One Drop Foundation.

A million dollar buy-in means that to take a seat round the table you need to bring a million dollars with you. The price of entry is expensive. In twenty twenty three he threw parties during the Las Vegas Formula One Grand Prix that raised funds for OneDrop. So OneDrops obviously is clearly his biggest thing. But there are some big numbers the reasonably big numbers here, OneDrop website says they've raised more than a hundred and fifty million dollars.

improving the living conditions of nearly three million people worldwide. Everyone needs water. Yeah. And it is interesting that he's putting a lot of effort into it. I mean his advice to Fortune magazine about philanthropy is also worth repeating. He said, We have to help those who don't have the economic stability to grow. or one day there will be very few who are able to buy what we're selling. AI tycoons take note of the Very true.

So if if if AI takes over the world, there'll be no people to buy the products they're telling us to buy. Interestingly, that is a very businessman's take on philanthropy, really. It's not about doing good for society, it's about making sure there are customers in the future. But you know, he does put effort into his philanthropy. I'm gonna give him a seven for philanthropy. I think he's a seven out of ten for me. Controversy?

the circus, to me, one of the appeal was always the jeopardy in it. You know, as the trapeze artist swings from one and is in midair, are they going to cal c catch the next one in midair? That's part of the thing. There is risk a and we can see that in some of the numbers. So there have been at least four deaths to performers and crew over the years, along with of course serious injuries. Every time they make headlines because Circuit Soleil is a massive enterprise.

I will say that within the industry itself, the company is apparently really well known for safety protocols. And there's a 2009 study which found that their injury rate is actually less than that of college gymnastics.

Well that makes smart business sense. You don't want to be shut down when you're making that kind of money over safety concerns, do you? There was also that controversy in Ian Halperin's unauthorised biography, but that ended with an out of court settlement and the author and publisher apologising. I kind of think that he scores quite low on controversy then, because I would have expected there to be a lot more injuries and deaths in the circus of all things.

No, I think actually amaz and also with his flamboyant lifestyle you imagine he got into a few scrapes that might have made the papers. More scrapes than did. And remember his inspiration, P. T. Barnum, the man who created the greatest show on earth, is attributed with the phrase there's no such thing as bad publicity but you know, for someone who's led that life he's courted very little I would say. Yeah, so I would give him maybe a three out of ten. Three out of ten sounds good to me.

And then power and legacy. What's he left behind in the world? As we said, he's often credited with completely reimagining the circus. By deciding to bring Sector Soleil to Las Vegas, he helped transform the city into a more family-friendly mainstream. And that's kind of interesting'cause it was kind of Sin city, gambling, prostitution, blah blah blah, all that kind of stuff. And this now it became, you know, come and see a big family show.

Yeah. So I do think that even though some people might think of Certusilli as being quite naff nowadays, you know. But I do think that out of all the billionaires we've talked about, you know, maybe, you know, George Lucas is one of them. There are very few people who've kind of made billions off the sheer power of their creativity alone. Art into circuits, basically. Yeah, an entertainer. There are very few entertainer billionaires.

Um I think that, you know, Cirque de Soleil has a look and feel that you could recognise and will do for some time, don't you think? In a couple of decades, I think. I think so. And it's funny to think that there haven't been any challenges to that crown. Like you imagine the Secret de Soleil formulas being relatively easy to replicate, right? Just good music, good costumes, acrobatics, gymnasts, you know.

you say w you you really cleverly pointed out, there's very little spoken word, if any, in it. So it's inc truly international. But I also think for that reason it is what it is and it hasn't really had much influence on the rest of theatre or entertainment like that. Isn't anything else like it? Yeah. Yeah. But I can imagine someone saying, Oh, have you seen this? It's got slightly cirque du Soleil vibes. That confers legacy on it, I think.

Hmm, it's interesting. How would I rank this? I would say maybe maybe just a five out five or six out of ten for. Yeah, I agree. Five. So The ultimate question is he good, bad or just another billionaire? What do you think? Email goodbadbillionaire at BBC.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to zero zero one nine one seven six eight six. six one seven six and tell us what you think.

And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode. And if you've ever seen a Sec du Soleil show, let us know what you think. Yes, and our thanks to Keith for suggesting Guy La Liberté and do keep your ideas coming as well. And we've had some listener feedback from Steven from the UK who says, Interesting programme. Thank you. Thanks very much, Stephen.

I'm afraid that I view all billionaires as bad. I don't believe that all people are equal. Some do have talents that are more desired or more useful for our society and therefore they're entitled to a greater share and greater rewards. However, nobody should be allowed to accumulate an unfair share of rewards when, in my view, anything over, say, 100 million most certainly is.

Just as democracy allows us to in theory constrain those who have acquired power and abuse it, we should do the same thing with taxation and constrain the excessive earnings of some. The idea that these people would not strive to innovate if they're not allowed to become billionaires. is patent nonsense. Interestingly, Stephen, you may have someone who agrees with you who is a big pop star. Do you know the singer Billy Eilish Simon? I do. I'm not totally under a rock.

Well, did you know that recently she gave a speech in a room that included billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and George Lucas and she said the words If you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? Uh if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it. Okay. So Stephen, you've certainly got a fan in Billy Eilish.

Thank you, Steven. It's you know, it's a big issue, inequality, should billionaires exist? But the fact is for the moment they do exist and we're having a lot of fun going through their life stories, so stick with us. So who do we have on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire? Something flattering, something figure hugging, something comfortable. Spanks.

The person who invented Spanx which became a kind of category defining product which has been copied by others, including one of our other billionaires, Kim Kardashian. That's Sarah Blakely on the next episode of Good. Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The researcher is Maria Neuen, the editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production. For the BBC World Service, the commissioning editor is John Minnell. Dear Dollar. I hope you feel fine.

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