cybersnyder

I are up in Central PA and people knew how to drive in snow, granted there was far less traffic. Moved to Columbia, MD and I stay off the roads if there is snow or ice. Have seen too many idiots that think SUV equals impervious to ice.

Probably nothing concrete yet. The problem is that it's too small of a community for things to not get out. In the absence of official statements, rumors thrive.

Yes. They still have the Cadets name which is certainly tarnished a bit but still strong. But $5k in tour fees ($4.5k if paid early, I think) would probably give some pause. I don't know how to quantify that impact. Personally, I'd wait until the last minute to sign a contract. Hopefully they're being upfront with potential members and it's not a case of "surprise, we're OC this year". That's worst case and people will feel ripped off. Parents especially after writing a big check. Sure, it's not always the parent paying, but you know what I mean.

If their income is limited, that would be a blessing.

The elephant in the room is that, unless I'm reading the 990's wrong and I'm not a CPA, YEA! appears to have been floating The Cadets. So they do make a clean break from YEA!, they need a sugar daddy/mama to field anything but a skeleton show. It will be painful and possibly lethal, but they need to make the break. If I'm thinking "nah" about making my small donations because I don't want the money to go directly or indirectly to the Hopkins settlement fund, I'm sure the big donors are thinking the same thing. Really hope they survive and thrive, but it's not going to be easy.

May you live in interesting times.

It doesn't have to be one reason and no others. Generally, it's many reasons to varying degrees.

I think people still want to hear the natural or mostly natural brass sound even if it has some bass reinforcement from the PA. Regardless, I think there is zero chance of the voting members agreeing to a 100 member limit. Each year there are around 3000 marching members. I'm not sure what the stats are, but my guess would be that half march one year, a quarter two years and a quarter three or more years. It's expensive and college ain't cheap either. Why aren't these people sticking with the events en masse? If they aren't interested enough to pay to see drum corps, there is little chance in growth of the general public beginning to take interest. Increase the entertainment value, increase demand, higher prices for tickets, more butts in seats. But success is now defined basically as surviving a season without using lines of credit much. If they actually began making profits, would the non-profit status be at risk? I really don't think there is a lot of interest in doing more than surviving another season.

The snag comes that you're assuming that the same number of tickets will be sold to see a 100 member corps as a 154 member corps. OC vs WC attendance seems to point to that not being the case. If an individual corps is making their finances work, spend away. EDIT: I agree with the above comment that the mindset needs to change. On initial thought, something like a budget cap seems fair similar to a salary cap for football, but then there are the nuances of higher costs in California versus Wyoming and some corps need to travel farther than other corps, etc, etc.

How would decreasing costs increase revenue? It may improve profitability, although I'm not sure what "profit" really means in drum corps. Seems like "profit" simply means "Oh goody, more money to spend next season!"

If attendance is down, then that needs to be addressed. Personally, I think the key lies in making shows more enjoyable to the butts in the seats rather than the guys and gals wearing the polos carrying the clipboards / iPads. I think it would be good to have more corps rather than fewer, but if you're depending on revenue from the new corps' family and friends, you're basically spreading more money, but individual corps get about the same as they're now earning.

For more corps and more events to equal more revenue, there would need to be more fans or existing fans would have to go to additional shows during the season. increasing supply would not necessarily create more demand.

I agree with smaller stadiums. The snag is almost always housing.

Yeah, I guess concerts would have similar seating as an indoor DCI event. Would people pay Jason Aldean money for DCI?

This is the only NBA contract I could find. The NBA teams will be given sweetheart deals and should be mostly even across teams as they want to keep their teams. Thunder pays $40k / game for the stadium and other costs listed. I'm not sure DCI would get as good of a deal for a one off indoor drum corps show. https://law.marquette.edu/assets/sports-law/pdf/lease-summary-oklahoma-city-thunder.pdf