DCI World Championships Finals - Paid Attendance Figures

[Jeff Ream]

6 hours ago, cixelsyd said:

It is largely accepted that reported attendance figures from the first two decades of DCI history are total attendance, unless the report says otherwise.  And it is also true that there were more corps at DCI Championships in some of those cases.  At the extreme (i.e. Montreal), 50 more corps entering via wristbands at an average of 60 per corps could add up to 3,000 more unpaid attendees.  (That, of course, assumes they all stayed in town and attended the finals.)

But even if you subtract 3,000 from each of those older numbers, the trends do not change.

total attendance as of the week? that day? there's conflicting reports.

[Jeff Ream]

1 hour ago, c mor said:

It seems to me that we need to accept that everything surrounding the drum corps activity is subjective, from tics, to GE, to demand, to attendance numbers.

how dare you use logic and common sense

[Jeff Ream]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

I have been in email contact with someone in the know; for obvious reasons and third party communication policy I cannot mention the person's name nor post the emails. But it was confirmed that the attendence figures posted here from at least the mid nineties on back were not necessarily just the 'paid' attendence, and there was no official set methodology to get an exact accurate count on butts in the seats numbers let alone those who had specifically  'paid' to enter the gate. Now there is a set methodology, but then nope.

Addendum: accurate receipt revenue and other revenue was reported on the 990's back then, but there was no cross-reference counting of actual butts in the seats.

well ####, how about that. maybe i was right. ( we may have even chatted with the same person LOL)

[Jeff Ream]

1 hour ago, Cappybara said:

You would think this would be self explanatory. Electronic records weren't exactly commonplace.

what they didnt count each ticket stub by hand after they ripped part off and dumped into the bin at the gate?

[Jeff Ream]

40 minutes ago, BRASSO said:

 I was present at several of these DCI Championships. So " I am in the know ". I was present, for example at the Montreal DCI Championships in 82, and know that the DCI paid attendance numbers released to the public was not " made up numbers ", nor " estimated numbers ", The IRS does not want " estimated numbers " They want to know real paid numbers, gross receipts, ticket sales. The DCI championship was a TWO day prelims for world Class level Corps, not a THREE day. The Finals Night PAID Attendance ( for just one season as an example ) was far larger in 1982 than any of the recent PAID attendance Finals Night PAID attendance. I don't need any anonymous email from someone to you to tell me what I know on this. Nobody that was present  in 1982 Finals Night will make the claim that the PAID Finals Night Attendance the last few seaaons at Indy on Finals nite is even close to the Finals Night PAID attendance at DCI Championships in 1982. There is no value to be had at attempts thru revisionisat history to discredit DCI's method of calculating its PAID attendance figures in former years as a lame attempt to prop up the present. We are on solid ground when we say that DCI has had an increase in its PAID attendance at Regionals and on Finals Night over some recent previous years. We lose credibility with folks that were PRESENT at Finals Championships, when  some anonymous person wants to imply that DCI did not know what they were doing regarding Finals Night PAID attendance counting in previous years. Thats ridiculous, no matter who  you supposedly got an email from. The lowest Finals Night attendance I attended  was in 1993 in Jackson, Miss. It was far lower than Indy the last few seasons as a matter of fact. On the other hand, I attended DCI Finals Night in the 80's that I KNOW were larger than Finals Night attendance in Indy the last few seasons. I don;t need anyone that was not present in the 1970's DCI Championships either ( I was present for some of them too ), or the 1980's Finals Night, 1990's, 2000;s etc, to tell me what I already know, and what I SAW and what DCI released to the public. So thats that, Stu, and people can say, believe, whatever they want. I don't care about the disbelievers, nor should I much care about them either. I personally think this topic has about run its course now, and perhaps its time to move on from it. Those that have convinced themselves that DCI somehow did not know how to accurarately count and state publically their PAID Finals Night Attendance figures in some previous DCI years are not going to be persuaded otherwise on the ridiculousness of that claim on DCI officials, so its time now to move on, imo

if i need to i'll go slowly:

 

the IRS doesnt care about attendance figures. They care about reported revenue from the event.I was at many of the events as well, and for the numbers listed, many of those stadiums couldn't get that many concert side, and video proves the crowd wasnt wrapped around down into the end zones.

 

 

Good lord, you'll argue anything into it's basic atomic compound no matter how much is shown to you that you aren't correct.

[Jeff Ream]

33 minutes ago, BDCorno said:

Yeah, you're pretty well capped at about 22,000 in Lucas with all seats sold "behind the beam". It's just not a huge venue to start with. Rose Bowl? 1/3 full for sure, and this was before the remodel and downsizing of seating, so the number was in the 33k-35k area. How much was paid? I'd posit that they'd have a hard time giving away 10,000-12,000 tickets, and there weren't that many MM's left to fill out the seats there. I hate to imply any "massaging" of the numbers,  but it would definitely be in DCI's best interest to lowball the numbers to help justify Indy as THE site, and give the "hey, attendance was the same" excuse for locking that in for a generation. I realize some of the benefits to having DCI in Indy, but in terms of growing the activity, it's not going to move the ball down that field.

 

the 24kish i think it is for Pasadena paid is legit. DCI has been accurate with those numbers since 97

[Jeff Ream]

13 minutes ago, garfield said:

I hear ya'!  It's like everyone knows more than I do sometimes!

And I hate to burst your bubble, but DCI doesn't report "paid receipts" either.  They report revenue; I know you know that.

I understand your viewpoint (I was at those shows, too), I just don't recall the crowd size comparison of actual vs. reported.

But I do know that the IRS doesn't care one whit about "paid receipts", and pulling that number out of the reported revenue as a basis for an attendance discussion would be very difficult for almost all except Wayne Leide.

 

#### facts again. always getting in the way of a Brasso argument

[Jeff Ream]

13 minutes ago, garfield said:

Horse. Sufficiently. Beaten.

 

the topic or the person arguing with everyone else?

 

[garfield]

1 minute ago, Jeff Ream said:

the topic or the person arguing with everyone else?

 

LOL!

I actually like Brasso.  He was "my first" all those years ago when I learned that sometimes I just have to stop arguing.  That lesson has carried me well when needed since.

 

[Stu]

8 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

well ####, how about that. maybe i was right. ( we may have even chatted with the same person LOL)

Maybe the same, but there are many who were 'in the know' back then.  And as you well know, I can't even PM ya the info without that person's permission.