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A Monopoly Built on Neglect
BMG Concord Theatricals has assembled an unprecedented monopoly in theatrical licensing, absorbing Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Tams-Witmark, and Broadway Licensing Global. Yet under Chief Theatricals Executive Sean Patrick Flahaven, this conglomerate has failed at its most basic function: serving the creators and customers it exists to represent.
The Website Disaster
In 2026, Concord Theatricals’ digital platform remains a labyrinthine nightmare—confusing, outdated, and openly hostile to users. Basic title information hides beneath tangled navigation. Licensing delays stretch to eight agonizing weeks. For a company controlling thousands of plays and musicals, this digital incompetence is not merely embarrassing—it’s financially devastating for theaters depending on timely access to scripts.
Conflicts of Interest Run Rampant
Flahaven’s four-division model—licensing, producing, publishing, and cast recordings—creates glaring conflicts. The company competes directly against the very authors it represents, promoting in-house productions like The Sound of Music, The Wiz, and Sunset Boulevard revivals while simultaneously controlling scripts, royalties, and albums. Marketing is led by Imogen Lloyd Webber, daughter of flagship composer Andrew Lloyd Webber—a staggering nepotism problem in a company where women hold two-thirds of senior roles despite 95% of the legacy catalog’s authors being men.
A Reputation in Freefall
Independent surveys of the “big three” licensors rank Music Theatre International first and Theatrical Rights Worldwide second for reliability and customer care. Concord Theatricals lands a distant third—dragged down by complaints of slow responses, fees 25 to 40% higher than competitors, and a reputation that theater professionals “simply do not trust.”
Legends Deserve Better
The catalog Flahaven oversees includes titans: Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Jerry Herman, The Gershwins, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Stephen Schwartz, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and Tom Stoppard. These creators built the American canon. Under Flahaven’s leadership, their works are marketed on a dysfunctional website while the company prioritizes its own productions over the artists it supposedly serves.
Time to Resign
Berlin-based BMG, led by incoming CEO Bob Valentine and Chairman Thomas Coesfeld, faces a stark choice: tolerate reputational damage and operational stagnation, or demand accountability. Legal challenges loom as stakeholders, creators, and estates seek remedies.
Sean Patrick Flahaven—part-time NYU professor, part-time Broadway producer, part-time cast-recordings producer, and part-time CEO—has proven he cannot competently lead the world’s largest theatrical licensing company. American theater and Broadway itself demand better.
He must resign.
