stevedci

~100,000 instantiations of value generating eyeballs, not unique sets of eyeballs.

I think Allentown regional is a DCI produced event, not YEA.

I'm guessing most stuff relating to audience demographics and actual paid attendance isn't really a matter of conjecture and opinion. Maybe these numbers might be a little illuminating -- 1994 1995 1999 2001 2004 2005 2007 Boston Buffalo Madison Buffalo Denver Boston Pasadena 24,513 19,100 20,501 16,406 22,047 20,548 24,309 But the focus on championship finals night as the metric of success is maybe misplaced.... how many eyeballs are watching the overall event and how much value are generated by those eyeballs.... you might be able to make a pretty compelling case that close to 100,000 sets of value-generating eyeballs watch the 2019 DCI championships live -- all events, all media, all platforms. I suspect that DCI knows, as opposed to thinks, how the demographics of the paid audience in allentown differs from rockford, from Nashville, from houston, from Atland, from Stanford....

What might be worth considering is what else will change if there are no scores. Folks are looking at maybe the tree and missing the forest -- if there are no scores, there will probably be no rules and without competition and "rules", there will likely be far fewer corps and those that remain will be financially solvent and bigger than the current rules stipulate. And dumping scores will dramatically alter the economic model (revenue generation in particular) for the remaining corps and DCI. To reprise a wee of history - no scores will usher in what was once upon a time suggested - the G7. Consider drum corps as a commodity with two faces -- as an entertainment/diversion for an audience and as a zen/educational endeavor for members. There is an imbalance between supply and demand for both -- too much drum corps for the market for audiences and too much drum corps as a zen/educational journey for members. If you dump scores, and the subsequent elimination rules, the supply/demand equilibrium will likely become more balanced. There will likely be fewer touring drum corps and drum corps overall will become, more specifically, a post-scholastic activity.

The Montreal championship were the most well attended... however... the number was approx 31,000. there is some flex in that because DCI was still in the cigar box accounting system at that tim. But.... what drove attendance at Montreal was the number of entrants - a record 101 units...30 more than previous high. These new units were mostly units affiliated with Montreal/Quebec schools/corps and never attended another DCI championships. To not be aware of the direct relationships between local corps entrants and fan attendance is a bit of an oversight. The same issue plays to some extent in the US -- championships in places that have little/no local entrants tend to have lower attendance - Miami, Jackson MS. The attendance patterns at DCI events across the country can be roughly grouped into audiences that need clearsil (Southeast and Texas), ethnically diverse and young audiences (west of rockies) and the Geritol crowd (east of Mississippi river and north of Ohio river). The direct correlation between entrant/participants and audience size was a key factor in making the Thursday prelims essentially an all-comers event : more corps, more audience.

ok a couple of observations-- 1. consider that this 2021 season is really away for a lot of corps to NOT refund $$$ collected for the 2020 season. It's something they can offer to folks who have already plunked down money. Downstream..... the financial viability is a crap shoot. 2. Something that DCI KNOWs is the importance of competition both to the members and the people purchasing the tickets. It is a major attendance driver, the only thing higher is being related to someone who is participating. The Blue Devils know this. All the corps know this. They don't think this - they KNOW this. 3. At the macro level it is worth considering whether DCI has decided that it's in the Not For Profit business, rather than the drum corps business. A looming question will be whether drum corps as defined by this new DCI will be summer scholastic marching bands, with winning and excellence defined by organization philosophy, policy and participation, while drum corps performance and design as many know it, becomes secondary.

Miller's Blackhawks were a USTA corps, and as pointed out, competed against, Conquistadores (Black Hawks and Conquistadores were both from Dayton Oh). Humington Thunders from Long Island and i vaguely recollect a music/baton corps from Carrolton Oh. The Black Hawks were a semi-feeder corps for the Marion Cadets in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And there were folks who started in the Miller Blackhawks, went to Marion Cadets then went on to other corps, including the Trooper, Kilties, Des Plaines Vanguard and a few others. The blue devils began as a twirling corps in 1956, found by the Odello family. Blue Devil #1 was Annete Odello - a twirler.

what the end of the Blue Devils 2018 performance would look like if it were done in the corona virus era ---

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767

think about the oakland A's and Moneyball... the statistical analysis of world class drum corps competitive placement over the past decade show that corps with most mature and experienced memberships out place those with younder, less experience members. If you knew the age an experience levels of a corps' membership before the season begins, you could predict their placement without ever seeing the program or design.

maybe woodwinds has nothing to do with an artistic/creative/programming desire? maybe its aims are 1) increase number of woman members and 2) increase number of members ergo increase number of tickets sold? if you added woodwinds, you might increase the max corps size to 200. that would be 1200 or so new world class members. if each members accounts for some number of ticket sales during the season, then may be a way to increase tickets sales? $$$ impact on corps - if average annual fee = $3500 and the average cost per member to be on tour is say just under $2000.... that looks to be an upside for the corps...the cost per member for tour included transportation so ignore number of buses....there would be other cost that would eat into that net for the corps - equipment, uniform, etc. On the dci side, there would be increases the cost to house corps on tour and increased difficult in locating places to house corps etc. the increase in logistics complexity would be challenging. on the gender mix side -- at the scholastic level, the male/female mix in woodwinds 75%-25%.. at the university level it is closer to 55%-45%... so maybe someone decided that adding woodwinds wasn't going to attract a lot of scholastic woodwind player but was really going to attract male university age woodwind players, not woman from that 75% segment in scholastic band... remember -- world class average age is more than 19.5 and more than 80% of world class members are post-scholastic/high school..... is that possible that the woodwind issue isn't being driven by the corps or the creative community?

to what extent do you think rule was more about making performance evaluations less objective - reducing the ability assess percussion up close - than safety?

hmmmm... i remember DCI doing some onsite demographic study 3 or 4 years ago, collecting data from event attendees or tablets....so i would guess that they probably have a some idea of the demographic profile of the audience at a significant number of events. the hypothsis that a significant portion of the audience at regionals and championship is family/friends might be semi-true, but it may well be that regional events each have a unique audience profile - some with more family, some with more alums, some with more students. I could imagine that the event location is a big factor in determining the audience demographic. DCI might look at events/shows in a textured fashion, not simply Regional vs. local, but probably factoring in promoter profile, distance people travel to events, density of population, motivation to attend, etc. i would think those would be the sorts of things DCI or any good business would be tracking. the issue that i suspect many die hard supporters are reluctant to consider is that maybe drum corps as a general rule, is not compelling and engaging enough to those not otherwise engaged to pay as much attention to as those inside the berm would like. hence, i suspect that even local shows are challenged to create new audience members, even with some customers have an non-drum corps allegiance to a companion event (festival? parade?)

bad reply

here's another way to look at the $$$$$.... working with a refined guess of your quess, members of DCI World class corps probably spend somewhere north of $14M in a season to be in DCI drum corps. Open Class members probably spend in the $8M range... so members are spending around $22M per year to be in DCI drum corps. There were about 5,800 members in DCI corps in 2018. sticking your finger in the air you could speculate that each world class member's family/friends will account for 9 or so tickets per year and maybe an open class member's friends family might account for 6-7 tickets per year..... and DCI needs to generate 65%-80% of the audience at any event out of thin air each year. so the question than becomes, ignoring the empirical pseudo paleontology in Jurassic park, can a raptor take a trex?

an issue with drum corps is that for many people it was the best years of their lives, between puberty and car payments....and anything that infringes on those great memories....... what some folks get and some don't, is that drum corps is about the people that do it.. and i would suspect that DCI knows that its business is driven by the now and the future, not the past -- i would guess that on a good night for most DCI's events, 65%-85% of the audience is new and has to be recreated each year. (Chicago Symphony - 80% of last CSO season tix buyers buy tix in the current year.) Clearly the folks on DCP are not necessarily in DCI core constituency... given DCI's role in providing its members corps a platform for those corps to fulfill their mission, DCI has to generate significant interest in participation - in 2018 5800 young people were members of DCI corps - and 12,000 auditioning for 2019 corps seems realistic, even with some corps sitting this one out - by choice or by fiat. Getting the families and friends of those 6000 or so members engaged early and often is likely a key part of what DCI does. Engaging those folks affiliated with members and sustaining that engagement for as long as possible may well be a top marketing priority. And getting back to the look backwards... i suspect that you would find current DCI members consider anything pre-2010 as history and before 2000 as long ago in a galaxy far far away.

Nostalgia is never as good as it used to be.

"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Manchurian Candidate

motives seem pretty clear.

In 2006, DCI consider a comprehensive plan to reorganize itself, separating competition and governance and seperating participation from placement/competition. this plan was defeated by a single vote, with the "No" block driven by Hopkins -- parts of this plan were adopted piece meal in 2008. a key part that wasn't adopted in 2008 was that each year, each corps was subject to an 'evaluation' to ensure compliance and competence off the field... the criteria for those evaluations had been developed over the preceding decade as DCI started to evaluate and assistance corps on an emergency basis. this work was the starting point for what has become the evaluation processes that new Open Class corps must comport with. But in 2008, DCI adopted some of 2006 new governance struture on a piece meal basis - they separated competitive success from the governance structure, made membership subject to the vote of the current membership, and allowed board members to be recalled/removed by a simple majority - not super majority - vote of the membership, they DID NOT adopt the 'every corps must pass an annual evaluation' piece.. and Pioneer was a grandfathered member. One reason that some corps wanted this "subject to successful evaluation" clause was to be able to proactively address corps whose methods of operating posed organization wide liability risks without regard to competitive success or lack thereof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

couple of comments.... 1. i suspect that DCI has a pretty good handle on the duration and value of their customer live cycle and try to market to customers in ways to a) start the cycle sooner and b) increase the value creation points. i suspect that customer life cycle is, on average 2+ seasons. 2. it looks to me like dci presumes that more corps = more members = more potential butts in seats and stuff sold. there is probably some calculation based on historic transactions and data collected from members, that sheds light on how many tickets a member's family and friend can be expected to purchase and how those numbers change based on age of members and length of service. 3. to garfield's point on retaining - i suspect DCI would tell you that the time a member spends in corps has increased slightly and that attempts to lengthen the customer life cycle track this. 4.it also looks like dci is focused on getting 15-23 year olds - either in reality or by proxy. i think there may be a presumption that bottoms up pressure on scholastic band members, rather than it all being the band director downward. not sure i see lots of effort aimed at getting/keeping people who are not affiliated with someone involved in a corps to keep them coming once that friend/family is no longer involved.. dci may perceive a better return on engaging more under 20 years olds than trying to get a non-engaged 45 year-old to come to an event. 5. my take would be that DCI corps think that the job/role of dci is create more value, not allocate a fixed size pie. and i'm not sure that the internal discussion revolves around how to distribute some revenue pie. i think those discussions revolve around how do you make the revenue pie bigger? the idea that dci can support everyone who wants to run a drum corps is dead. it looks to me like dci provides a platform - critical mass of relevance, operational support, music industry legitimacy. grass-roots support - that affords a corps - OC or WC - the opportunity to seceed and the metrics to measure that success. 6. somewhere in all this i suspect is recognition that DCI's primary customer is a member/potential member. and those members have choices, as do the corps and as do family/friends. People choose to engage w/ drum corps international - a critical characteristic of the organization.

ponder this as why there may be more to 150 size than bus size.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

we just finished the 2012 Project Persona survey for DCI... it's reasonable to assume that there are slightly more than 3200 performers in 22 world class corps.

two things to consider.... 1. The essence of the drum corps experience for the members/performers 2. Rule of 150