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Live Streaming Finals


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Not buying it.

DCI went years without making the best seats exclusive to donors. I should have the opportunity to get tickets in 239-241, 339-341, 439-441 w/o having to troll the message boards or other "scalpers". I shouldn't forced to spend x amount of money to get the opportunity to spend another x amount of money to buy the best seats. The reeks of exclusivity and keeping the regular fan away from the best seats. I am sorry and you can negative tick me into oblivion, but I should be forced into getting seats on the 30's or 35's ifI want to spend 255-275 per person for a "Super 3". If you want more money for those then charge 300, 325, 350...but don't make it an exclusive opportunity fo the affluent.

As much as I agree with the above, I can't agree with much at all in your post or your beliefs. I've been a member of Friends since 1985; what years are you speaking of when donors didn't get a seat benefit of some sort, 1972 to 1985? OK, I'll give you that point.

From a business perspective, the Friends program makes ultimate sense and is immediately 100% successful if handled well. Just do the math to figure what price per ticket a $2500 Friends member pays, and you can see the appeal to DCI. Few could blame them for building a Friends program. So you must be blaming the Friends themselves because it is they who choose to spend more per ticket than you do to get good seats.

I'm sorry that you feel the way you do but remember. if DCI follows your view to remove my incentive and, there-by, loses my Friends contribution, they'll have to increase tickets for everyone between the 10 yard lines.

It sounds like you'll better understand this rationale: just consider the fee I pay to Friends (remember, that's in addition to the ticket price) as a tax on the wealthy that subsidizes the lower ticket prices of the 99%. I suppose you'll want me to pay the tax and still not get the benefit of good seats but DCI is not the IRS. Like in Atlas Shrugged, I can choose to just walk away, leaving you to bemoan that ticket prices go up and up.

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No, but it would cut into attendance and ticket sales.

maybe, maybe not. tickets + flight + hotel for me alone from seattle to indy is roughly $1000. and that's before taking into account food, transportation and eventually my kids' college tuition. all kidding aside though, I, for one, cannot afford the trip. as much as I love the activity, the cost of hotels, transportation and a weekend of tickets is outrageous these days if you don't have a group to go with or family to stay with.

I may be in the minority (and if my memory is correct, I think I've already said this in another topic from long ago) but I would even pay an additional premium just to see the live stream of finals on the fan network. How much would I be willing to pay? I don't think FREE should be considered, to be quite frank. But maybe $40-ish would be fair. And that would be what I would propose - ON TOP of the fan network cost. This not only helps DCI out, by covering the cost of a ticket, but also people like me who just cannot afford the trip. My wife and I made it to Pasadena 5 years ago and if it weren't for the fact that my family still lives a couple hours outside of LA, I may not have been able to afford it then either.

I guess I'm just feeling a lot more pressure these days to save rather than spend. Not in a "greedy" sense. Just cautious. I know there are deals and ways to make trips work that are more affordable. But between me, my wife and my two children, it's not something we are willing to put high on the priority list in this current economic world we live in. That doesn't mean I don't still love it or don't want to enjoy it.

Let me also say that I believe that there is NO better way to watch drum corps than in person and live. I've never seen a video or heard an album of drum corps that sounded anywhere near as good as it is from the stands. But we all can't go every year. We all want to and some people find ways, but we can't all make the same sacrifices that others can.

So if DCI was willing to add an additional "premium" to purchase the PPV of dci finals LIVE - I would gladly pay it.

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maybe, maybe not. tickets + flight + hotel for me alone from seattle to indy is roughly $1000. and that's before taking into account food, transportation and eventually my kids' college tuition. all kidding aside though, I, for one, cannot afford the trip. as much as I love the activity, the cost of hotels, transportation and a weekend of tickets is outrageous these days if you don't have a group to go with or family to stay with.

I may be in the minority (and if my memory is correct, I think I've already said this in another topic from long ago) but I would even pay an additional premium just to see the live stream of finals on the fan network. How much would I be willing to pay? I don't think FREE should be considered, to be quite frank. But maybe $40-ish would be fair. And that would be what I would propose - ON TOP of the fan network cost. This not only helps DCI out, by covering the cost of a ticket, but also people like me who just cannot afford the trip. My wife and I made it to Pasadena 5 years ago and if it weren't for the fact that my family still lives a couple hours outside of LA, I may not have been able to afford it then either.

I guess I'm just feeling a lot more pressure these days to save rather than spend. Not in a "greedy" sense. Just cautious. I know there are deals and ways to make trips work that are more affordable. But between me, my wife and my two children, it's not something we are willing to put high on the priority list in this current economic world we live in. That doesn't mean I don't still love it or don't want to enjoy it.

Let me also say that I believe that there is NO better way to watch drum corps than in person and live. I've never seen a video or heard an album of drum corps that sounded anywhere near as good as it is from the stands. But we all can't go every year. We all want to and some people find ways, but we can't all make the same sacrifices that others can.

So if DCI was willing to add an additional "premium" to purchase the PPV of dci finals LIVE - I would gladly pay it.

I like your ideas. I think that a future Live stream of Finals should only be offered in a package that includes the DVD. That way the DVD sales would either stay the same or increase.

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The NFL and other organized sports have been dealing with this issue for decades. I think there is enough data to assume that there might be an impact to ticket sales if the event was streamed live....I mean, that's kind of a Duh!

So...consider a threshold for ticket sales and then "blackout" if they don't reach it. Otherwise, make a professional production out of it, charge a premium and let the world in. BTW, most of us DCPers don't recognize the wide interest in DCI internationally (afterall....DCI), so a well produced live feed COULD have enormous impact on fan base everyway. The competive component of this activity is key... and a live feed of finals is really the only way that DCI can profit from that component. Also, DVD has a very different audience and my sense is that live feed would not hurt those sales. In any case, it's worth trying instead of making the classic error of strangling access to the activity, assuming that's the only way to max profits.

Oh.....one last thing.....MOVE FINALS AROUND ONCE IN A WHILE!!!!!!!!!

Even the NFL only blackouts broadcasts in the actual market where the game is being played. If I live in Denver and want to watch a game in Tampa that is not sold out, I can do that even when the Tampa market is blacked out. It is absurd to expect people all over the world to come to Indy for the only opportunity to watch Finals.

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i can't afford to go to finals. Simple enough.

Would I pay a little extra to watch it live? YES.

Do I buy DVD's each year? No.

Why? The Fan Network. I can wait a few months...

Exactly! It is a no brainer to allow people who can't afford or are unwilling to pay the cost of going to Indy to watch Finals through a live stream. It is called price discrimination. Economics 101. Sometimes the business decisions of DCI baffle me. Who do they have making these decisions?

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the benefit is $$$. DCI gets cut a break on prices if attendance goes down.DCI HQ is right there. They claim they get a deal on hotels, but ###### if I know where the price break is.

So why they heck would they not want to make even more money by streaming Finals for a fee?

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Hey Plan, I didn't say "that the reason for dwindling attendance..." was due to wandering finals. My point is that for all those years finals wandered, and attendance still declined in those "early" years. In fact, I remember reading that part of the rationale for anchoring finals in Indy was to provide corps - AND FANS - the opportunity to know their DC vacation costs up front. It was thought that it would help increase finals attendance, and I'm not sure there's enough evidence yet to call that reason substantiated.

I drive a 40 foot motorhome to finals, and have done so since 1999. We vacationed around DC from 1985 until 2008 and we saw a whole lot of country, and enjoyed many new destinations, because we were part of that roving circus. I'm whole-heartedly and completely in favor of wandering finals again, beginning next year. So says my personal desire.

When I put my business hat on, however, the idea falls on it's face based on DCI's rationalization. The potential geographic and relationship scale that is attained by DCI being located in the heart of music and arts support along with many other music organizations cannot be denied and, they would contend, can be easily demonstrated in actual cost savings and increased revenue. Just the reduced stadium cost is a big number. Add in the benefit of supposedly mostly-known recurring expenses to attend finals and the expected benefits to the corps outweigh the fan benefit of wandering finals.

I think the real answer is in the results of how DCI leverages off of those relationships. Other than a bunch of music buddies meeting for lunch every month to plot and plan, has there been a demonstrable benefit attained by being anchored in Indy? Have the decisions been based in reality, the actions taken efficiently and completely, and the results measured to prove their contention? I'm suspicious.

I've always thought the contention was specious that corps could "plan better" knowing finals were in Indy every year. With the way the corps move around the country it's relatively the same task to plan for finals in Denver as it is for Indy, although I'm no tour-planning expert. Corps that don't make it to Indy wouldn't any more easily or safely make it to Denver to compete; if that extra $23,000 was make or break for the corps it's unlikely they can make the extra miles "safely" *.

DCI seems to have emphasized the big regionals to replace the "finals vacation" of wandering finals, but there are only five of those and they're not finals.

I do think that there's a building demand pressure for non-Indy finals from the fan base (witness the Rose Bowl), and in another few years there will be enough data to determine if the Indy contract was worth while. I wish they'd make the decision now, but I'd doubt the 4-year data as a sound decision base. The question is whether the demand will match the data when it's finally tablulated.

* Assumptions: $350,000 annual corps budget, 15,000 average miles per season, approx. $23 per mile, 1000 miles between Indy and Denver (not verified, too lazy).

And there are NONE in the west, where a third of the corps have their home base.

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I like your ideas. I think that a future Live stream of Finals should only be offered in a package that includes the DVD. That way the DVD sales would either stay the same or increase.

DVD sales are not the concern. If DVD sales were the concern, they wouldn't put videos of finals on the fan network. Showing a VOD version of finals on the fan network is going to cut into DVD sales far more than a live stream would.

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Personal attacks removed.

Disagreements of a personal nature are not conducive to the discussion; those parties involved may make use of the Private Messenger feature in order to iron out any misunderstandings in a manner that does not disrupt the thread.

Thanks! :smile:

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IMHO, this is one way to put it to DCI:

I cannot afford to go to Finals this year. You will not receive any revenue from me in Indy. I already have FN with the Blu-Ray option, which means I will get VOD's on Monday. If you live streamed Finals this year for an additional fee, I would have gladly paid it unless it were completely unreasonable. You would be receiving money from me that you would not have received otherwise. In future years, my first choice will always be to attend Finals live if I can, but if I can't I would pay extra to see a live stream.

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