Slingerland

How do other leagues that form come up with who should be part of their group? They get together and decide on some criteria for who would make a good member, based on market location, access to capital, technical proficiency, and a consideration of whether each of the partners feels like a good match for the others or not. In addition, the new leagues almost always have required that each of the member team owners come up with some sort of financial guarantee, so that each one has skin in the game from the onset. My belief is that the path forward should involve not just an evaluation of which 18 corps really are the most committed to the game, but which ones have Board of Directors who are serious enough about promoting the activity as a a whole that they'd be willing to commit their corps to a $100,000 -150,000 "buy in" for a revamped Drum Corps International, with that money used as seed money to put together a total rebranding of the activity. That, in and of itself, would help distinguish who's serious about the business of drum corps and who isn't. It's my basic contention that the DCI business model, as it stands, is pretty much irretrievably broken. 40 years down the road, the organization has next to nothing in reserves, and the overall fan base is significantly down from even 20 or 30 years ago. I'd suggest that one of the primary reasons for this has been that it's become the Generic Drum Corps Association, where it has to try and be everything to everybody, and they have to avoid mentioning that some of the units are actually pretty-much semi-pro or college-level drum corps, and others are high school groups, because acknowledging that there are genuinely different levels of expertise on display would be "giving a middle finger" to the youngest/smallest/most local organizations out there. As to 18, because it's a number that lends itself to communications of what DCI Premier League is, is a realistic assessment of how many top corps there are, and is a number that will allow for upwards pressure from corps in the second division, whatever that's called, to bust into the 18 and force some of the lower performing corps out, were the Second Division corps ever to get so good that their season average scores topped those of the guys at the top. 18 also lends itself to a natural division of units, were the Premier League to add the concept of regional divisions (East, Central and West, or just East, West, if you went to two). You've said you're not convinced that there needs to be multiple divisions in the first place, and I can respect that, though I strongly disagree with it. That being the case, I'm not sure anything I or anyone else could say would convince you that the DCM model, for DCI, is a bad fit, but that MLB, Euro soccer leagues, or even high school level varsity/junior varsity divisions will make sense.

Then what should the number be, out of curiosity? Because the moment anyone allows that there should be two different divisions in DCI (which most of you do), you're already acceded to the core of the proposition; that different divisions for drum corps makes sense. From there, it's simply coming up with a rationale for how big or small the divisions should be, and what the criteria should be, whether it be size of organization, average age or participant, proficiency, or any other factor you want to plug in. As the apocryphal quotation says, "we've already established what kinds of ladies you are, now we're just establishing the price.' Come up with valid, marketable, understandable rationales as to why an organization might belong in one division or the other. There were a grand total of 35 drum corps who competed in Prelims last year; would it REALLY be such a "f___ you" to the whole of drum corps if slightly over half of all corps who competed were put into one division, and slightly less than half of them were in the other?

Yes, but you'd have to go back to January to find it. Slightly veering off topic (or maybe not); since we'd all like to see the competitive landscape shaken up, but don't want to handicap the execution scores of the top corps, what would the judging system need to look like in order to allow for the "on any given night" moves that would allow a corps to jump over 2 or 3 others from the night before (or get beaten by others who they've taken recently)? If the scores were reported without breakdows and recaps during the season, would that introduce a blind element that would keep judges from knowing what their peers thought about a certain corps' program or capabilities? If judges were flying blind, from a score and caption standpoint, would that increase the likelihood that they would go with their guts and give each performance the number that it earned that night, without fear of being an outlier? Or do the judges really just think so much alike that all of them uniformly think Blue Devils have a great visual design and give it top numbers (something I'm not personally convinced is true, but whatever). My guess is that kind of "blind" system could lead to a more exciting season, but I can also guess that the staffs and corps directors would blow their tops, because some of them seem to believe that they're actually the ones who are competing. I happen to agree with Daniel that an 18-corps "premier league" and another league that has its own identity is both more honest and a better way to foster fair competition, but I believe even more strongly that there could be tweaks to the judging system that would allow the kids in the corps to be scored based on what they did on a given night even more than who their staff is and what the conventional wisdom says about the quality of their design work.

Well, a few others in the group certainly felt that....

And in mine, it's to look at what businesses and people are doing and ask them why they've never noticed that huge obvious booger hanging from their nose before posing for their official portrait. If DCI is to host events, but not care about making them as wildly successful as possible, then they have no real reason to be. Another organization should be formed to take over who would care about making sure that every seat is sold. I'm not a fan of the G7, but I'd go along with them on that point, if that were the choice. DCI is an events and marketing company FOR youth organizations, not a "youth organization" themselves. IF DCI's leadership feels the corps' products aren't sellable enough to the fan base, then it seems to me that onus would be on them to stand up and say "here's what we think; the surveys say this, and you guys need to address this." If the corps directors refused to go along, the only real course of action would be to throw in the towel and leave the corps to wallow in their own mess. There are some strong personalities involved in this activity, but the only way some of them will give you respect is if you show them you won't be pushed around. Given a popularity contest among various directors. it's unlikely Dan A would lose to a few of the loudest voices in the room, so there's no reason for him to be shy about standing up for more populist, more sellable shows, IF that's what he really thinks DCI needs in order to grow their fan base.

I gotta say Garfield, all due respect, because I know you're a serious man, but the fact that you're even questioning the logic of the value of increasing the number of actual customers for the corps is just nonsensical, and so completely divorced from the basics of market principles as to be ....incredible. The ticket price isn't "the audience" - people are the audience. People who are independent beings with their own access to capital. Bring more of them into the room and give them an opportunity to do business with the drum corps, and you've succeeded far beyond just keeping the same old people and raising their ticket prices. Whether you intend to or not, you're starting to argue the opposite of reality; that somehow DCI would be better served by a smaller audience that was paying more per ticket. I challenge you to find a retail analyst or consultant would sign on to that particular petition when it comes to a mass consumer good. You want to make it an either or? Then fine ; yes, if DCI was able to keep driving down the costs of tickets, but increasing the overall number of people attending, that would be the best option, as long as the evidence shows that those additional audience members are now spending additional money directly with the drum corps. Were DCI able to deliver enough BITS so that the corps could sell a lot more merchandise than now, enough to offset any possible loss in payouts from DCI, the directors would probably sign off on that deal So does DCI have a plan to do any of this? Cuz I gotta say, at Finals prices being what they are now, they're not exactly gonna see too many more kangaroos at the bar. If it's not, then it would be time to disband the organization and create a new one, as this one would have no other real purpose.

If DCI's actions and marketing involve helping the corps create larger audiences for their work and more revenue through the additional exposure, than they have created additional revenues for the corps. Put 30,000 people in a stadium where they can buy t-shirts, and the overall number of t-shirt sales will likely increase over an event where there are just 3,000 people in the stands. Grow the number of people who paid something to watch a show, put more people in contact with the corps, and you've created a bigger audiences for the corps' products overall. I don't know how to put it any simpler than that. More people going to drum corps shows = more money available to the activity, because the pool of customers is now larger. The only way to argue that that isn't likely is to engage in a type of magical thinking that ignores the reality of how people act and the truths of the market when it comes to consumer products. The more DVD decks you sell, the more DVD's you'll sell, because you've created a larger market for the ancillary goods (or in that case, the necessary goods). The more people you put into a stadium watching a drum corps show, the more people you'll have who talk about what they saw and the more potential donors and patrons you deliver to the corps themselves.

Yes. And yes. More attendance means more people buying tickets to drum corps shows, means more t-shirts being sold, means more people saying "I'm going to the drum corps show tonight," means more people talking about the product that DCI is there to sell. If more people are paying to see what you do, even if the overall gross doesn't go up, you would still count that as a win, because the ancillary benefit of having more overall butts in the seats is a good thing. And here's your hypothetical for a hypothetical; would you rather have DCI sell 15,000 tickets to Finals at $75 each, or 30,000 tickets to Finals at $37.50 each? The gross dollars would be the same, but the overall success of the event would be judged superior by doubling the number of butts in the stadium, because those butts have additional value outside of just their ticket price.

And the profit margin in that time, in both percentage and real dollars? Finals attendance (a big thing, since Finals week is the biggest money week of the year)? Are they on PBS, as they were that year? There are more factors to consider than just overall gross revenues. If the costs to the corps were all up by 5% a year or more in the same time frame, that could be worrisome. I should probably clarify and say that I don't see them as "failing", the way that the G7 proposal posits. That was, and is, wrong. They're doing a fine job of managing the existing base. The question is whether there's a strategy in place to not just keep up with inflation, but to open new avenues to audience development and the new dollars that come from that development. SoundSport...yeah, maybe. Eventually, though that strikes me as something that might be more popular in Asia than here, since there's already more of a tradition for it. But they DO have an existing product that shouldn't be that hard to communicate to an American audience, since most Americans have seen musicians on a football field before. They just haven't necessarily seen how good some of those musicians can be. There's the challenge.

Does a corps deliver on its mission if it puts its members in positions where they're wrestling 90 pounds over their weights? Grouping competitors into leagues that are designed to give the competitors a fair shot within a given range of like competitors is the norm in this society, not the outlier. No one expects a high school team to have to play against college teams, or college against pro. A corps whose average membership age is 16 or 17 is simply not well matched against a group of 20 year olds. Those three or four years make a huge difference in strength, skill and experience, just as they do in most other team sports (individuals, not so much, as there'll always be the 14 year old tennis wunderkind). As I said, it's not a zero-sum game unless one really does believe that the market is saturated, in which case, let's go ahead and wrap this up. Using the numbers from Finals, exactly .00055% of the United States cares enough about what these kids do to show up to their "Super Bowl" and watch them do it. I don't think that's the case. I'd like to think we can at least boost it to oh, at least .001%. (I couldn't resist, but IF that happened, at an average $40 ticket price, it would be another $800,000 in DCI's pocket, for not a single dime of additional expense; LOS doesn't charge them more for selling more tickets, I'd imagine.)

Then they should all stop competing. If it's just about the experience, then the contests mean nothing, and those kids are wasting their time bothering to perfect what they've been given. Why would anyone care? Just show up. Cut everyone a $100 check for their corps' appearance, and everyone meets down at the Dairy Queen for sundaes. But you and I know that the members really do care about competing. Watch the kids in your favorite corps when the kick the __ of another corps that they've been trailing all season long. There's blood in those voices. They like to compete. And that's great, because the competitive aspect of the activity is one of the things that really makes it useful in teaching those life lessons. In this sport, the only way to win anything is to prepare to win, and preparation, and the ability to perform under presssure, are the elements that separates the greats from the also rans. The numbers-side of me would say that 300 surveys from one contest tells you something about your specific event (but it's cool that you do that -nicely done). But were we to do the same survey at a DCI regional contest, would the results be the same? I go to my town's concerts on the green in summer because I like to support the idea of what it represents, but my presence isn't driven by affinity for a particular player in the town band either. However, if I'm getting the car and driving a few hours to get to a concert or sporting event, you can bet that I'm going to see particular entertainers or teams. I don't share your sanguine view of how DCI, as an organization is selling the product and delivering the goods. As I said, the numbers indicate that they're surviving, but not thriving. No. English soccer league viewership around the world is bigger now than it was 20 years ago. The multi-league format hasn't made anything smaller; just the opposite. Premier league gets a lion's share of the notice, but the other leagues get corporate sponsorship and tv ratings too, and when a team gets promoted to Premier, it's a very big deal for their fans. While I'm not sure that a rising tide lifts all boats, in economics, it IS true that the higher profile your industry is, the more likely you are to attract new talent and new capital. Make drum corps, as a sport, more visible and I'd argue that you also make it more viable, and that's the biggest reason why the movement to more realistic, performance-criteria leagues wouldn't frighten me. I don't see a zero-sum game here.

10-4 on this. DCI - and their member corps - need to find out exactly what their audiences think about them, and the thoughts of those who COULD be audiences, but aren't. This, btw, is something that there is corporate money available to help underwrite; it might not be sexy, but there are companies who will put money into helping non-profit orgs improve their positioning and communications. Not sure if they'd still do it, but at one point, American Express underwrote an extensive study of Americans' attitudes toward live performing arts, research that's still being used today. Would be sort of interesting to see what kind of responses DCI would get if they could launch a rebranding of the activity that specifically took on the band geek stereotype, since my own belief is that the stigma attached to being in a marching ensemble is one of the things that holds the activity back, overall.

I'd suggest that it's not always necessary to identify "a problem" so much as to ask some basic questions the same way every healthy business does. Are we as successful as we could be? Is there a saturation point that we've hit, or surpassed? Are we offering the best products that we can? Is our product mix relevant to what the consumers want? Do we have a unique position in the market? Has everyone who might be interested in the product been approached? The answer to a lot of those questions is almost always either "nope" or "not as much as it could be", which is reason enough to be looking for better ways to do what you do. I would absolutely agree that the tempests of the last few years haven't helped keep the organization focused, but I'd also suggest that there's nothing in that that couldn't be fixed with someone deciding to take charge, rather than allowing the mice to run the kitchen. Bill Cook accurately predicted that too many corps directors having too much self-interest, combined with an executive team who was there to "manage" more than lead, would lead to exactly the situation DCI finds itself in now. But it's nothing that can't be addressed. Everyone really wants the same thing; more kids marching, more people watching, even higher performance levels, and more affordable experiences for everyone involved. Scaling the activity up is key to almost all of those issues. Trying to get simpler and smaller, on the other hand, is usually the first step toward the press release that announces your business will be closing its doors.

Crown's 2011 990 shows $980k on drum corps expenses. That's about the same amount of program expense as the 18th place corps this year, and the 3rd place corps in 2012. Once you're at a certain level, placement isn't purely determined by budgets. There are other factors at play. And if someone thinks that you NEED a lot of money to succeed, Pac Crest and Oregon Crusaders and several others can show you that you don't. It all cuts both ways. I keep waiting for ONE positive suggestion from you, however. All I'm getting is how much you despise everyone at the top of the field, but nothing about how to make DCI bigger and stronger.

All good points. In terms of competitive ranges, to an extent, there are already three different tiers of activity for drum corps at the junior level, with differences that are large enough to make a three-tier approach a possible solution (or maybe Sound Sport is the third division? That would make some sense.) I'd actually go a step further and say that maybe what needs to happen is to have DCI, WGI, and DCA sit down together with an eye toward a potential merger of all three. DCI would still be the senior circuit (from a budget standpoint), but there are enough crossovers in terms of marketing, potential sponsorships, etc, that it could make sense for each of them to have a particular portion of their area of expertise while still sharing certain costs related to marketing and promotions of the three related activities.

Wait until they see Gibbs telling them how he wants them to program their shows!

That might be a solution to some issues, but are you merging two strong organizations for the purposes of creating an even better entity, or are you merging two organizations just because you can save a few dollars by doing so? In other words, what does this do to make the entire package stronger and more viable? DCA is only a $290k a year organization, and I'd imagine is run almost purely on a volunteer basis, so you're not really talking about a merger of equals there; you're looking at having DCI take over DCA (would the DCA corps even want that?) Another solution might be to have DCA expand their all-ages roster to include corps that are currently in the Open Class and lower tiers of World Class, which would serve to increase their roster of available performing organizations and increase their visibility in markets where they're not currently that active.

None of which disproves my point; that corps who place 4th place and corps that come in at18th place corps can and do spend comparable amounts of money. There's not necessarily a correlation between budget and placement once you get to certain spending levels. The noticeable difference comes once you drop below 20th place, or so. There, the budgets are likely to be much lower. Since DCI has no mechanism in place (or means) to allow for the type of revenue boost that might make those organizations more competitive with those who are already at a higher level, it makes more sense to put those organizations into a league that allows them to compete more meaningfully with each other. The current designations of Open Class and World Class clearly have no real meaning, competitively. Someone asked what would happen if a particular pro franchise was so bad that they'd continually lose to minor league teams. Well, I would imagine that the if the gates in that team's city fell so much that the other teams in the League were feeling the effect of that poor performance, the other owners would find a way to either pressure the owner to bring in a new staff or pressure him to sell the franchise to someone who could do more with it. If you have a sucko team, and can still sell tickets to events, you still bring value to the other members of the league. (See "Cubs, Chicago"), but if the day comes when you neither sell tickets or bring other value to the enterprise, someone will do something to make a change.

Zildjian, D'Addario (Evans), etc, are all relatively small family-based companies. Yamaha is a multi-national, but they do most of their support through product donations/sales to the corps themselves, not DCI, so you're unlikely to see them want to drop another $100-250k in cash, when they already get their promotions taken care of via the corps themselves. The idea that drum corps is a fixed product that has no potential for growth is tantamount to saying "our product is dumb, and no one will ever like us." Sorry if I don't buy into that idea. If your product is really so sucky, either change the product or shut down.

Look at the demographics of who does drum corps, who has life experience that should lend itself to drum corps viewing, and who watches drum corps already. You've got a number of demos in there that are in the range of what consumer brands like like Target, McDonalds, and other mainstream companies like to see. The right ages, the right incomes, the right priorities (education and hard work) and the element of friendly competition. Did you participate in performing arts in High School? Then DCI has a product that you might relate to (and nearly 40% of all American high school kids ARE participating in performing arts programs in school). DCI needs to consider not how much they have, but how much potential value they're sitting on. Garfield brought up W Buffet; Buffet's strength as an investor is looking at brands and companies that have unrealized value, not those that are already at the top of their game. It's my contention that DCI has a lot of unrealized value, but they are afraid of exploiting it to the fullest because it would necessarily involve selling some elements of their package harder than others. The game plan should be to get the product cleaned up and clarified enough to make it understandable to your potential sponsors, with the understanding that you're asking them to be part of the expansion of the product and brand, rather than delivering them a ready-made item. Sell them on the unrealized value and potential of the product, and be willing to do what you have to do to help them - and yourself - realize the full potential.

I'd totally agree with this. But be warned that any new blood, if they come at it from a pure outsiders' perspective, would likely have ideas even more radical than anything that either the G7 or a few of us like Daniel Ray and myself have suggested.

IN 2011, Troopers and Bluecoats had more or less the same expenses (about $850k). Also in that range were Boston, Glassmen, and Madison. There was no significant difference in the program expenses among a wide array of corps. If you use SCV or BD, you have to acknowledge that both corps also have a range of other programs that get figured into their overall organizational expenses, so aren't easily compared. I suggest the European soccer leagues as a possible model because it does the best job of being clear with audiences and sponsors that there are varying degrees of excellence on display, but they still allow for teams whose performance improves to be promoted to the premier league, while providing a path for teams who've lost their edge to keep competing while having some pressure put to bear to step their games back up. At the same time, for those teams whose owners aren't able or interested in making a push for premier status, they have a league that is well-respected, where they are competing with other teams at their own level for a title, rather than being a 23rd or 29th place team in a bigger league. Not sure why anyone would object to using a model that works quite well in other consumer-oriented competitions. in terms of the "how it would work", there are number of methods. You could use an overall points system to help determine standings, you could use the sudden death model (where the top 16 at Quarters becomes next year's premier league - I think that's actually the worst choice, since it allows one performance and one set of judges to have too much sway), etc. But first you have to commit to embracing the reality that DCI has at least two, and probably three very distinct levels of proficiency out there, and that failing to do a better job of aligning the corps into meaningful divisions makes it harder to tell the public and potential sponsors just what it is they're seeing. A major brand sponsor is someone whose name and logo is prominently featured on the product, and who pays an amount of money for their sponsorship that is commensurate with the size of the activity. For a $10 million marketing and events company, a major sponsorship would be at least $100,000 in cash every year. I know a number of the brands who are currently with DCI, and they're all great folks, none of whom are paying DCI anywhere near those amounts of money. Anyone who isn't aware of the amount of money that companies spend on events sponsorship is someone who should be kept far away from the decision making process. But you have to be able to show those potential sponsors very clearly who and what they're sponsoring. The NCAA gets sponsors for their products because they're pushing the best college athletes; most high school leagues don't get corporate sponsorships like that because...they're high school leagues. That's not to say that they aren't 'good', but that they aren't the same as the Div 1 college leagues. Most high school team supporters wouldn't be offended by pointing that out, but in drum corps, they do. DCI's outside charitable support in 2010 was $330k, a little less than 4% of their total revenues. YEA's was $360k, about 9% of their total income. One member corps brought in more charitable support than DCI did. That's not a sign that DCI has a major base of outside support for their non-business related activities.

How much does DCI make from "providing venue service support", and who is that phrase when he's at home? From a business standpoint, DCI was set up as a central clearing house for major drum corps events, to standardize rules, and provide a single voice for the major corps of the day (the founders really weren't thinking about anyone else when they got it off the ground; they figured everyone would figure things out as they needed). If anything, the problem right now is that there is no clear voice, no central message, and, it appears, no set of basic business principles that guide their decision making. A business that can't succinctly boil their purpose and position down to a single, actionable sentence, is a business that's lost its way. I don't know how you actualize "providing venue service support", since I don't know where the price tag is for doing that, whatever it is. But we could figure out to a fine degree how much it costs to rent a stadium, market an event, sell tickets, pay judges, and write checks to the partners who performed that night. One is a business action, the other is a gobbledegook.

DCI pitches a league called "World Class", but a few of those "World Class" corps get their butts handed to them regularly by other corps who are supposed to be DCI's minor leaguers. The point made by me and several others is that a more realistic alignment that breaks the organizations into more realistic divisions/leagues would be a good move. Your comments don't change the reality that guides that otherwise common practice in other competitive leagues: if the "best" teams can be easily beaten by other teams that are not supposed to be that good, than those "best" teams are probably playing in the wrong league for them, and having them in the wrong division/league clouds your overall marketing message, making it less than accurate or honest. DCI can "mission" all they want, but their function is to sell tickets and recordings and get the money back into the hands of the corps. Is there a percentage of overall revenues that they hold (or should hold) as the target for distribution? Would 50% of gross revenues be fair? After all, they really only have the one purpose, so if overhead of operations is such that they can't afford to get back to the corps at least $50 out of every $100 of the corps' products they sell, then maybe the problem really is that the efficiency issues are with the home office more than the drum corps. Form. Follows. Function. DCI's "function" was and is to be a central clearing house for the business of selling drum corps, and to use that power of scale to be able to efficiently get the corps back as much money as they can. I know some here want to believe the org has all these other great things they're supposed to be doing, but since a look at the numbers shows that they raise almost nothing in charitable support (certainly not compared to the corps themselves), and have no major national brands/corporations on board to help underwrite the costs of their marketing ("major" is $100k a year or more), all of those other great things are being paid for by money that the fans give to them to watch shows. That money, less the costs of production, was originally supposed to be delivered back to the corps whose work they're selling. Classic case of mission creep without having the necessary framework in place to support the additional costs of the creep. You want to say that the corps are spending too much; a look at the 990s thread indicates that the costs of doing drum corps on a national touring basis are what they are, and are pretty consistent across the top 16 or 18 organizations. When something is that consistent - when the 18th place unit isn't really spending significantly more or less than the 4th place unit, it's a sign that there is a level that would indicate that the expenses are consistent enough across the board to indicate "right." I have a couple friends who work in management with Groupon, and before the Board took action last week to remove Andrew Mason (the CEO), they were marveling at the fact that the guy still had people within the company who swore up and down that he was the right man for the job, despite all performance evidence to the contrary. Anyone who thinks that DCI is hitting it out of the park right now seems to me to be in a similar state of denial. DCI, as an organization, is surviving, but not necessarily growing. Treading water isn't the same thing as winning a gold medal in the 100 metre freestyle. (Lest anyone misread that as a call for a change in staffing at DCI, it's not; it's simply a call for the DCI Board to have their own come to Jesus moment and figure out a plan that boosts overall revenues and clarifies their message. There MAY end up being some changes in staffing, but like Sullivan's dictate, the 'form' of those changes would follow function too.)

Pardon me if my middle years are making my brain fuzzy...but didn't Regiment in 2008 win Finals? Their total GE score that year was within a hair of tying (and they won Music GE). How much more credit should they have gotten? I'd be all in favor of a total overhaul of the judging standards. Absolutely. Shows that are more fun to watch should get more credit than shows that are less fun to watch, assuming the execution is the same, but better executed should still beat "fun" any day, because "better executed" is something that is totally in the control of the performers. Madison '99 was fine, but they weren't working at the level of what Vanguard and BD (or Cavaliers, for that matter) brought to the field. And if you listen to the crowd response to SCV that night, the audience seemed to be pretty #### happy with what they were doing, so it's not like Vanguard got credit for performing a dry show very well; they got credit for performing well AND for having a great overall package.. But hey, some progress here. We agree on something, kind of maybe. Keep in mind, though, that even if the standards were changed to allow for more credit for execution, the lower-tier corps are still likely going to be scoring well-under the top-tier corps. It's a mistake to think that corps like BD and Crown, etc are where they are just because the judges like them (though I think there is some of that in there). They are where they are because they do the execution thing and performance thing extremely well.