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Fan Network 2013


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So that's $345,000 if everyone has the non-media sub at $69, and $895,000 if everyone has the blu-ray at $179. I'm guessing closer to $345,000. Let's say DCI is grossing .5M on this. If the budget is around 13M (IIRC from "The Garfield Thread" â„¢ ?), then less than 5% of the DCI budget comes from FN, even assuming 100% profit.

This suggests that unless DCI is on a more critical knife edge than usual, it might be more useful to not think purely in terms of what maximizes revenue, as you suggested they do, but to balance profit and promotions.

I'm not talking about lowering prices or changing offers, but consider:

Two kinds of free content. The current free stuff would be moved to a tab that existing drum corps fans could access; but the front-and-center free stuff would be one random full corps performance from the last ten years, with a bias toward the HD era stuff and toward top placing units. In other words, stuff that would attract new fans, such as high school band members eager to be blown away by Crown's A Second Chance or whatever. Only top-tier, general-public-impressing material.

There is a principle in media marketing that you can give away content the customer can't control (and even pay to give it away) in order to promote the purchase of customer controlled content. Because the uncontrolled content does not cut into the costumer-controlled content profits. In other words, hearing a song on the radio does not decrease it's sales, it increases its sales significantly because the customer can't control it. The customer is really paying to be able to control the content. And more will pay because it is being promoted.

Granted, this kind of discussion is common on DCP and the blanket argument "DCI considers all options and this is the best one. None of the others works. We will go bankrupt immediately if we do it any other way than we are doing right now." tends to be the final answer, but I can't believe that DCI really has good data on how many people would avoid subscribing just because some free content is available, versus how many they would attract. This is very difficult data to get right. You just have to do it for a year and see what happens.

$500k/year is 9 employees making an average of 50k/year plus benefits (I'm not human resource major, but you have to leave a little room for that kind of stuff, right..?) to maintain the site, film VOD/live-streaming stuff, etc.

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$500k/year is 9 employees making an average of 50k/year plus benefits (I'm not human resource major, but you have to leave a little room for that kind of stuff, right..?) to maintain the site, film VOD/live-streaming stuff, etc.

I wouldn't think it costs anywhere near .5M to run FN, but my point was that even if it costs $0 and all the .5M is profit, that's still less than 5% of DCI's budget. There should be significant wiggle room for experiments in promotions.

It occurs to me that when DCI promotes drum corps in general, the primary beneficiary is not DCI, it is the member corps who would get a larger talent pool of potential members. This would result in higher tour fees (more revenue) and better performers, and thus, better shows. It would be in the years following that DCI would benefit from the larger audiences. And even then the connection would not be obvious, because many other factors affect audience sizes, as has been discussed on other threads.

In addition, attracting attention to the activity reaps other benefits, sometimes unexpected and unpredictable. Putting the wow factor front and center on fan network would be a step in that direction.

I like the fact that DCI had put clips of recent finals performances on the dci.org homepage, but they need to be up top where newcomers can see them and at least 50% of each performance. (Can you imagine anyone NOT buying FN because they already saw the first half of each show for free? Even if that's possible, it would be overwhelmed by the new subs it would generate.) And they need to stay there.

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Slightly OT; how much does upgrading cost (from just Live to Live+Blu-Ray or Live+DVD). Is it just the price difference? I don't see that info on the site. Also, how does one do that? Call them? Thx.

Does anyone know this? Thanks.

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Slightly OT; how much does upgrading cost (from just Live to Live+Blu-Ray or Live+DVD). Is it just the price difference? I don't see that info on the site. Also, how does one do that? Call them? Thx.

If I remember correctly, it is the price difference. I did this a few seasons ago, literally on Finals night, as I succumbed to impatience.

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5,000 subscribers. Say 2500 of them sign up and $25 extra to get finals. that's $62,500 in additional revenue....not counting those who would have to say pay $40 to buy it live without a subscription. Say 500 people make that impulse buy...that's another $20k.

I'm guessing my estimates are low.

I would love to know the ultimate reason why DCI continues to not live-stream finals:

* worries about tech crashing/huge complaints?

* worried about losing revenue from DVD/Blu-ray?

* worried about losing revenue from Finals tickets?

* worried about straining relations with Indy: seemingly encouraging fans to NOT go to Finals and spend money in the city?

* is there a contractual thing somewhere stipulating DCI is unable to live stream finals?

* did data show that not enough people are interested in purchasing Finals at a price point DCI would need to charge to make it worth their while?

* is there something else we're not seeing?

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I would love to know the ultimate reason why DCI continues to not live-stream finals:

* worries about tech crashing/huge complaints?

* worried about losing revenue from DVD/Blu-ray?

* worried about losing revenue from Finals tickets?

* worried about straining relations with Indy: seemingly encouraging fans to NOT go to Finals and spend money in the city?

* is there a contractual thing somewhere stipulating DCI is unable to live stream finals?

* did data show that not enough people are interested in purchasing Finals at a price point DCI would need to charge to make it worth their while?

* is there something else we're not seeing?

I can only answer the last question....logical thought

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I would love to know the ultimate reason why DCI continues to not live-stream finals:

* worries about tech crashing/huge complaints?

* worried about losing revenue from DVD/Blu-ray?

* worried about losing revenue from Finals tickets?

* worried about straining relations with Indy: seemingly encouraging fans to NOT go to Finals and spend money in the city?

* is there a contractual thing somewhere stipulating DCI is unable to live stream finals?

* did data show that not enough people are interested in purchasing Finals at a price point DCI would need to charge to make it worth their while?

* is there something else we're not seeing?

At least the first four are probably true.

You know, they could do a Sunday after finals event, in which for a price you can see finals on demand any time on that Sunday only. This would give those who can't go a way to see finals, while still having an incentive to go live and/or buy the existing on demand packages and media. And reduce the impact of technical glitches since they would have all day. Just a thought.

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If I remember correctly, it is the price difference. I did this a few seasons ago, literally on Finals night, as I succumbed to impatience.

Thanks. That helps because I can't really justify the whole nut right now.

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You know, they could do a Sunday after finals event, in which for a price you can see finals on demand any time on that Sunday only. This would give those who can't go a way to see finals, while still having an incentive to go live and/or buy the existing on demand packages and media. And reduce the impact of technical glitches since they would have all day. Just a thought.

They do that now with the DVD/Blu-ray combo package: you can live-stream Finals shows the day after Finals. I'd even love it if DCI put the shows up following the performance

For example, if 12th place Crossmen performs at 6pm, if they put the show up for live-streaming 30 min. later, or an hour later, or something: immediate gratification!! :tongue:

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At least the first four are probably true.

You know, they could do a Sunday after finals event, in which for a price you can see finals on demand any time on that Sunday only. This would give those who can't go a way to see finals, while still having an incentive to go live and/or buy the existing on demand packages and media. And reduce the impact of technical glitches since they would have all day. Just a thought.

they run Atlanta, San Antonio, Minnesota and semis...what's one more day?

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