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by Chris Peterson
When Broadway Licensing Group was sold to Concord earlier this year, the headlines made it sound like a big win. Concord, the powerhouse behind some of the world’s most recognizable music and theater properties, had bought the company for more than $38 million.
For people who had backed BLG in its early days, that should have been a champagne moment. But for one of the company’s first investors, Yebo “Boris” Cao, the sale has turned into something else entirely. According to his complaint, it is now a lawsuit, a sense of betrayal, and the realization that while others cashed in, he was left with almost nothing. For him, what looked from the outside like a success story has become instead, in the words of the complaint, a case study in how insiders can rewrite the ending of a narrative to benefit themselves.
Cao’s story, as told in his filing, begins back in 2019 when BLG was still known as Antelope Theatricals. He was not just a checkbook investor. He joined the board, he raised money, he helped assess deals, and he put more than a million dollars into the venture through an investment group called HTL Theatrical Licensing. At the time, HTL owned about 45% percent of BLG, while another group, KMS Licensing, held the rest. On paper, it looked like a balanced arrangement. In practice, according to Cao, that balance started to tilt and then collapse in ways he says were deeply unfair.
For a while, things seemed fine. HTL was managed by Kenneth Dingledine, who gave quarterly updates, shared financial reports, and kept investors in the loop. BLG grew steadily and made acquisitions, including Dramatists Play Service. The company seemed to be building momentum toward something big. But in 2024, as BLG’s value climbed and whispers of a sale grew louder, the atmosphere shifted. Two majority investors, Todd Abbott and Bradley Banks, worked to remove Dingledine from his role. Under the rules, they needed 75% support to replace him without cause, and they did not have it. So instead, according to the lawsuit, they pushed him out with cause, giving themselves an easier path.
That move, Cao claims, gave Abbott and his allies more control. Sophie Qi briefly became the manager of HTL before Abbott took the reins himself. Meanwhile, Cao lost his seat as a board observer. He describes this as the moment when the lights went out: no more updates, no more access to information, just silence as decisions were made behind closed doors.
At almost the same time, BLG’s then CEO, Sean Cercone, made an offer to buy the company himself for $33 million. Kevin McCollum, representing KMS, cast the key vote to block it. Weeks later, Cercone was out as CEO and, according to the filing, was quietly paid three hundred fifty thousand dollars to walk away and stay quiet about the offer. By now, Cao says, the insiders had locked up power and were preparing for the bigger prize, BLG’s eventual sale to Concord.
This is where the loans come in. Starting in mid-2024, BLG borrowed millions from companies owned by Abbott and McCollum. These were not ordinary loans. According to the lawsuit, the interest rates ballooned to levels that sound absurd, hundreds of percent annually once fees were included. The filing argues that the loans were basically a way to funnel money back to the insiders, since repayment was virtually guaranteed once Concord bought the company. Instead of bringing in a bank or giving all investors a chance to participate, the loans were kept in the family.
Then came the big sale. On paper, Concord’s acquisition of BLG for $38 million should have been a win for everyone. But when the numbers were finalized, more than $24 million was shaved off in deductions. According to Cao’s complaint, loan repayments and enormous fees went straight to Abbott and McCollum. A $3 million office lease was inexplicably charged against the deal. More than a million dollars was paid to a company owned by Qi, labeled restitution, though there was no clear reason for it. Two other investors who had structured their money as debt were made whole with interest. By the time the slicing was done, less than $11 million remained to share.
HTL’s cut came to under $4 million. And then, within HTL itself, further deductions were taken before money was distributed to its members. The end result for Cao, according to the complaint, was less than ninety thousand dollars back on his million dollar stake. Meanwhile, Abbott and Qi were the only investors who managed to walk away almost whole, with Qi even making a profit.
The filing lays out the disparity in stark terms. Cao had the worst return of any major investor, recovering less than eight percent of what he put in. And this was not, he argues, because the company failed. BLG sold for a healthy price. The value was there. But the way the deal was structured, the complaint claims, meant that insiders collected their rewards first, leaving early backers like Cao out in the cold.
Cao’s lawsuit does not read like a dry legal brief. It reads like someone telling the story of how trust was broken. He accuses the people in control of breaching their duties, shutting down communication, and setting up financial maneuvers that benefited themselves at the expense of others. He calls out the loans with sky-high interest, the questionable deductions, the hush money to a departing CEO, and the overall lack of transparency. He wants damages, restitution, and a reckoning for what he describes as betrayal.
The case is still in its early stages, but it has already drawn coverage. As the South Shore Press put it in a straightforward summary, “Cao alleges he lost over ninety percent of his investment while defendants enriched themselves through insider loans and undisclosed payouts.” That sentence alone captures why the lawsuit has people talking. It is not a story of a business gone bust, but of a successful sale that somehow left one of the earliest and most committed investors with almost nothing.
And beyond the specifics, the case highlights a bigger issue. In industries like theatrical licensing, where the spotlight rarely shines on corporate governance, there is a vulnerability for minority investors. The people who help get a company off the ground may not always be the ones who benefit when it is sold. The levers of power, board seats, management roles, and control of information, can tilt the outcome dramatically. In Cao’s telling, that is exactly what happened here.
For him, it is not just about the money. It is about being part of a company from its earliest days, believing in its potential, helping it grow, and then watching as others rewrote the script in the final act. BLG sold for a strong price. Concord clearly saw the value. But for Cao, the sale became proof that value does not always trickle down to those who believed in it first. His complaint may or may not succeed in court, but as a story, it is already a reminder that in business, success does not mean everyone celebrates. Sometimes it means someone is left standing at the curtain call, wondering how everything went so wrong, and how the people who seemed like partners ended up being the very ones who benefited most.
