Subject:
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Re: BrickFest registration fees (was: LEGO Adult Fan Convention at Legoland California?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events, lugnet.events.brickfest
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Date:
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Sat, 9 Sep 2006 23:09:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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82 times
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In lugnet.events, Magnus Lauglo wrote:
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Jeff, Marc and all,
By all means, let’s have a frank, honest, transparent and civil discussion
about this stuff now.
My understanding is that the public days bring in (a projected amount of)
money that helps keeping registration at the level it is. Whether or not you
like the public expo element of the event, surely you recognize that without
it, the costs of running the event would be greater and ticket price would
likely go up.
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I’m not convinced of this at all. My estimations of the amount of money coming
in does not match up with information I have been able to glean on costs. I am
not privy to the financial details, and could be wrong, but I still have my
suspicions.
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I’m not privy to the details of how other comparable conventions manage to
charge so little, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved corporate
sponsorship. While TLC has had an increased (and very much IMO welcomed)
presence at Brickfest over past years, I don’t think BrickFest should get to
the point where it becomes financially dependent on the company.
Jeff, as someone who is involved in anime fan community, if you could find
out how exactly they are able to keep costs low that would be useful. If
there are any ways to make this kind of event cheaper, (short of corprorate
sponsorhip) that BF organizers are unaware of, then let’s try to find out
about them.
I realize that not everyone can afford to attend BrickFest but I don’t think
that $60 for a three day event is expensive at all. In the hands of less
competant, or more financially motivated organizers, an event like this could
easily cost a couple of hundred bucks.
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Only large anime conventions can get corporate sponsorship/donations, and even
then it is a small percentage of total income. The anime studios suffering
financial difficulties right now for the most part, so even those are lower now,
as I understand it. The major sources of income are registration fees (full
price normally about $45-$55, but pre-registration fees can be as low as $35)
and dealer’s room fees, which tend to run between $100 and $1000 depending on
the size of the convention. BF charged $15-20. T-shirts, pins, buttons, etc.
are pretty much a negligble source of income. Many anime conventions run in the
red for the first few years, although that may be changing since now even the
smallest conventions generally get 750-1250 attendees.
The major expenses of anime conventions are the venue, equipment rentals, and
guests. In the past, the GMU site has been dirt cheap for us, and I know we
were comp’ed at least some of the venue space at the Sheraton this year.
Equipment is very costly for anime conventions, because they need to rent AV
equipment for every room (4-8 rooms for smaller conventions, upwards of 20 for
larger), including projectors, speakers, DVD players, largescreen televisions,
etc. BF had one or two projectors (and couldn’t have really used more than four
or five), plus at least one person brought their own this year, and I brought
one last year, but these were for specific uses, not geneal allocation. Anime
conventions don’t have anything like a public day, so they don’t get that sort
of income. I’d estimate it brought in about the same amount as regular
membership did at BF, give or take 10%. The other major expense is guests.
They pay for the flights, room (including usually at least one extra day for
siteseeing), and meals. I have no information on whether BF did this or not,
but I suspect Lego paid for all Lego employees. If BF *did* pay for any guests,
I hope it was no more than the keynote speaker, since the event (IMO) is not
large enough to support a lot of guests.
In addition to that, the convention does pay for the hotel rooms of staff and
volunteers (who are frequently packed 4 to a room to save money). Staff and
volunteers also get in free since they are generally there working rather than
enjoying themselves. One of the ways many younger attendees have been able to
afford it is by volunteering, which allows them to save the expense of reg and
room, but they have to work for 8 hours each day (usually running video rooms or
acting as gophers). BF had nothing like this. All volunteers and theme
coordinators had to pay registration and the cost of the room, unless they were
local or made other arrangements.
Finally, absolutely no reputable anime convention pays any sort of compensation
to the staffmembers or conchair. Every anime con staffer I’ve spoken to has
gotten a look of disgust on their face when that is mentioned. There are many
reasons people staff anime conventions (usually love of the hobby or to be an
important member of the community), but money is not one of the reasons.
Recieving any sort of salary or wage, IMO, amounts pretty much to embezzling and
if I ever confirmed it was happening at any convention I attend, I would
immediately stop.
Jeff
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