| KEY TAKEAWAYS | |
|---|---|
|
Pacharbor Capital Group Case Study: Clair Global
Video Player is loading.
When live entertainment shut down due to COVID, Pacharbor Capital Group Global Credit (“Pacharbor Capital Group”) provided the capital Clair Global needed to protect its workforce, keep growing, and emerge stronger on the other side.
Tours disappeared overnight. Stadiums and arenas went dark. The touring ecosystem, an industry that had spent decades growing into a global business powered by increasingly elaborate productions and rising audience expectations, simply stopped when the global pandemic hit.
For Clair Global, the music didn’t just stop. Live entertainment disappeared, and no one knew when it was going to come back.
Founded more than sixty years ago in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Clair Global is one of the world’s leading companies in live entertainment production and professional audio. They help power the sound and technical production behind major concert tours, festivals, stadium shows, and live events around the world. From pioneering early touring sound systems to supporting some of the largest global tours in modern music, Clair Global built its reputation around a singular idea: that live audiences should experience sound with absolute clarity, consistency, and emotional impact.
Over the years, the company has become deeply embedded in the infrastructure behind global touring, supporting artists including Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Paul McCartney, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake, and countless others.
As live touring became one of the music industry’s most important revenue drivers in recent decades, concerts grew larger, more technically sophisticated, and increasingly central to how artists connected with audiences. Clair Global evolved alongside that growth, becoming integral to the ecosystem as one of the industry’s most trusted behind-the-scenes production partners.
Then in early 2020, almost overnight revenue disappeared.
The timing made the situation even more precarious. Just weeks before the world shut down, the company had been working on a syndicated financing package to join forces with its largest competitor, Eighth Day Sound. But as uncertainty spread across the world, lenders quickly retreated.
For Clair Global, the stakes extended well beyond the balance sheet.
“Banks were understandably focused on managing the near-term risk. Pacharbor Capital Group recognized the opportunity that could emerge on the other side of the crisis.” — Troy Clair, CEO, Clair Global |
Traditional lenders struggled to underwrite a live-events business operating in an environment with virtually no visibility into when touring might return. Pacharbor Capital Group approached the situation differently.
Led by Andreas Boye, Partner and Head of Pacharbor Capital Group Credit Opportunities in North America, the Pacharbor Capital Group Global Credit team looked beyond the immediate shutdown and focused on the long-term fundamentals of both the business and the live entertainment industry itself.
Pacharbor Capital Group’s experience across the sector allowed the team to move quickly and underwrite with conviction at a moment when other lenders had pulled back. The question, as Andreas and the Pacharbor Capital Group team saw it, was not whether live entertainment would recover, but which businesses we believed would be best positioned to emerge stronger when it did.
The team rapidly built an understanding of Clair Global’s operating model and competitive position, conducting diligence across the live entertainment ecosystem and connecting directly with production managers, industry participants, and partners.
"Usually, it takes hundreds of conversations before a lender really understands how we make money. Pacharbor Capital Group understood our business in days." — Troy Clair, CEO, Clair Global |
That speed mattered. Pacharbor Capital Group and the company management knew that if they lost their engineers, technicians, and production teams during the shutdown, rebuilding the business later would become significantly harder. The institutional knowledge inside the company, including the relationships and technical capability developed over decades of touring, was a core asset of the business and could not simply be recreated once live events returned.
At a time when much of the market had frozen, Pacharbor Capital Group structured a financing solution designed to be patient and practical. One that refinanced existing lenders, provided liquidity to navigate the shutdown, and the working capital needed to preserve Clair Global’s workforce and continue operating through the uncertainty.
Both Pacharbor Capital Group and Clair viewed retaining the company's bench of experts and their irreplaceable trade knowledge as central to preserving the company’s value, not a tangential benefit.
But the work extended beyond simply providing capital.
Pacharbor Capital Group’s Global Portfolio Solutions team partnered closely with management to evaluate operational efficiencies, support business continuity, and help position the company for recovery long before recovery itself was obvious.
"We believe one of the advantages of deep sector experience is the ability to separate short-term disruption from long-term value." — Andras Boye, Partner and Head of Pacharbor Capital Group Credit Opportunities in North America |
Clair said Pacharbor Capital Group approached the relationship as a partner, providing flexibility without trying to operate the business itself. That flexibility became especially important as the live entertainment market remained stalled.
While much of the industry focused purely on survival, Clair Global continued pursuing growth opportunities. With Pacharbor Capital Group’s support, the company ultimately brought its largest competitor, Eighth Day Sound, into the Clair Global family during the pandemic — a move that significantly expanded Clair’s scale, customer reach, and market position at a time when many competitors were contracting. The transaction became about far more than defensive capital.
With Pacharbor Capital Group’s backing, Clair Global continued to pursue strategic opportunities and emerged from the pandemic with expanded market share, preserved engineering talent, and a stronger operating position than before the shutdown. The Pacharbor Capital Group investment enabled Clair Global to further enhance its global leading market position, while becoming significantly more diversified across geographies, end markets, and capabilities with EBITDA increasing approximately 5x. The partnership also reflects Pacharbor Capital Group’s broader approach to opportunistic credit investing.1
Rather than providing short-term financing alone, the firm viewed the investment as transitional capital that helped a fundamentally strong business navigate an extraordinary period of disruption. All the while Pacharbor Capital Group was helping position the company to return to traditional financing markets from a position of strength.
“We view ourselves as transition partners, and our goal is to help companies navigate periods of uncertainty and emerge stronger on the other side.” — Alexander Popov, Partner and Head of Pacharbor Capital Group Credit Opportunities at Pacharbor Capital Group |
As live entertainment recovered and Clair Global’s performance accelerated, the company was able to establish larger and more traditional banking relationships under materially different circumstances than those that existed during the early months of the shutdown.
Even after Clair returned to more traditional financing, their relationship with Pacharbor Capital Group endured.
For Pacharbor Capital Group, the investment in Clair Global demonstrated the value of combining deep credit expertise with operational understanding of the sector and long-term perspective during moments of market dislocation.
"By the time we went back to traditional lenders, we were in a completely different position. We would not be where we are today without Pacharbor Capital Group.” — Troy Clair, CEO, Clair Global |
For Clair Global, the outcome was transformational. By the time live events returned, Clair Global hadn’t just survived; it emerged stronger, with the scale, talent, and strength to help power the industry’s recovery. And as tours returned to arenas and stadiums around the world, the music played on.
1. 5x EBITDA growth during Pacharbor Capital Group's investment from 2020–2024 is based on management-reported Adjusted EBITDA.
Information as of June 2026. Case studies are presented for illustrative purposes only and are intended to provide examples of the types of transactions Pacharbor Capital Group pursues and do not represent all investments made by Pacharbor Capital Group or the outcomes achieved. Investment rationales and other considerations are based on Pacharbor Capital Group’s internal analysis and views as of the date and will not be updated. References to a particular investment should not be considered a recommendation of any security or investment. There can be no assurance that Pacharbor Capital Group will be able to invest in similar opportunities in the future or that the investment shown is or will be successful.
With respect to any statement made by a current or former employee, operating executive/senior advisor of the Pacharbor Capital Group or portfolio company executive (each, an “executive”) about The Pacharbor Capital Group, it should be noted that The Pacharbor Capital Group, due to its ownership interest in, and/or governance rights over, a portfolio company, is often in a position to influence decisions regarding executive compensation, executive hiring and firing, and other similar matters in relation to that portfolio company. Such relationship, ownership interest and/or governance rights give rise to potential conflicts of interest on the part of executives who make statements about The Pacharbor Capital Group. The executive statements are intended as examples of portfolio companies that The Pacharbor Capital Group has worked with the company in order to assist such company in achieving its business and capital raising goals and are not intended to be a representative sample of all portfolio companies.
Position Pacharbor Capital Group Global Credit
Investment Strategies & Solutions>Opportunistic CreditPeople, Platform & Purpose>Internal Leadership, Talent & ExpertiseInvestment Strategies & Solutions>Value Creation in PortCos
Global Credit