What year will Finals not be in Indy?

[Jeff Ream]

Lucas and THE corps are all working on the sound issue. Lucas is trying different things to better the acoustics and corps are programming differently to make the dome experience reward them.

I love the Idea of Indy forever.

no offense, but we have been hearing that since 2009

[Jeff Ream]

People will go where finals are at.

maybe. but look at the Denver and Rose Bowl numbers

[Jeff Ream]

For fans that attend these events INDY SUCKS. Lucus Oil can't even make this ANGRY MOB of concert goers happy. FAIL!

http://www.theindychannel.com/video/17490790/index.html

not enough black curtains

[Michael Boo]

For fans that attend these events INDY SUCKS. Lucus Oil can't even make this ANGRY MOB of concert goers happy. FAIL!

http://www.theindychannel.com/video/17490790/index.html

For the record, this was back on September 13, 2008 and was the first such show in an untested arena where nothing had been tweaked by then. I don't know if things would be any different now, but everything about the environment as it applied to a non-football event was being broken in at that concert.

[skajerk]

Or Jackson or Miami.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

You have no idea how close I came to red marking you!!!

[ajwdad]

I hope a permanent base in Indy won't negatively effect DCI support on the west coast. I can't speak for everyone out west, but these early season shows are getting old quick.

have to agree with you. When my sons quit marching, I will never return to Indy for DCI. And if all we get out here are the first couple of shows of the year, I will stop supporting drum corp except for my corp. The shows change so much during the season that they are almost a different product later on.

The move to Indy will cost DCI fans in the long run. Hope they save enough money to keep afloat... But bad marketing decisions usually cost the companies making them. In this case, DCI and all of the corp members.

[flammaster]

For the record, this was back on September 13, 2008 and was the first such show in an untested arena where nothing had been tweaked by then. I don't know if things would be any different now, but everything about the environment as it applied to a non-football event was being broken in at that concert.

Oh so the stadium had to be broken in? Ahhhh. Just like those headphones and the 100 dollar speaker wires have to "burn in". M'kay.

[ajwdad]

I don't think it would be feasible for every corps to have the money to make it all the way to California anymore. Many corps are cutting down on their tour mileage to save on travel costs as it is. If finals were to be held in California, I think we would see corps that would not be able to have a full tour then.

Indianapolis was partially chosen because it is a day's drive or less for something like 65% of the country. That is huge in terms of cost for travelers.

You are likely right, but again the west coast gets screwed. Sure glad that no professional sports would do something like this to its fan base. And what about the extra costs for our corps here? This has been hashed to death, and no one at DCI gives a flying fart about it.

[kaseyW]

You are likely right, but again the west coast gets screwed. Sure glad that no professional sports would do something like this to its fan base. And what about the extra costs for our corps here? This has been hashed to death, and no one at DCI gives a flying fart about it.

Indy is a more central location that Pasadena. There are more central and eastern corps combined then there are western corps. The western corps aren't getting "screwed", and there are still to this day many corps from the east who decide to make the trek out west.

[bluecoats34]

From a pretty low base. They haven't gotten close to the 27K paid in Pasadena in 2007 or 24K paid (IIRC) in Denver in 2004.

DCI made a tradeoff between lower venue costs in Indy vs. audience size. So far, Indy audiences have been poor by historical standards for finals but probably not so poor that this has been a bad decision. I'd bet that finals are in Indy "forever" (meaning until the paid audience drops below 10K or so).

But you must also remember that after 2007 is when the recession really hit everyone hard, so for a lot of people and families, making any sort of trip was simply not feasible during that time. As the recession got better and people were able to afford the trip again, we saw numbers rising. Another way to tell that drum corps is growing since the recession took hold is souvie sales. We are seeing record numbers in souvie revenue in the past couple years.

You are likely right, but again the west coast gets screwed. Sure glad that no professional sports would do something like this to its fan base. And what about the extra costs for our corps here? This has been hashed to death, and no one at DCI gives a flying fart about it.

A professional sports team has major corporate sponsors that can shovel money to make all the fans happy. And from what I've heard, the cost of travel in the west is so much more expensive than a city such as Indianapolis. I'm sure fans would have to spend a lot more on hotels, flights, food, etc.