Fran Haring Posted October 1, 2022 Share Posted October 1, 2022 21 minutes ago, C.Holland said: world class is a production selling a touring experience to performers with significant training. Like broadway doesn’t teach performers how to perform, it teaches them the show they’ve being cast in. The corps who have the most revenue (that is not music related) are the best situated to reduce their tuition, and they won’t as long as students are showing up in droves to pay it. open class is more of a service attempting to sell an experience. They’re teaching more fundamentals and less show components. Their budgets are estimated but their revenue heavily dependent on tuition. Their finances often volatile. DCA doesn’t know what it collectively wants to sell. If members show up to pay fees, it doesn’t matter if the stands are empty. Empty stands only hurt the corps who try to get the highest appearance fees, or it hurts the show if the show can’t afford them. If they reduce show demand, to create more fan friendly performances and to bring in lesser experienced performers, it may hurt their membership numbers as students don’t want to pay for an experience less than the experience they’re already paying for in high school or indoor. Sure sounds like a "between a rock and a hard place" scenario for DCA. I don't think the "service only" option would keep DCA in business too much longer. Maybe DCA needs to adopt the mindset of numerous minor-league baseball teams, who know their product can't match that of the major-league level, but hustle to make up the difference by turning minor-league games into an overall "fun for the fans" experience with various promotions, giveaways, contests, and so forth? I don't know. I just wish my friends with DCA well, regardless of the decisions they make. The future of all-age drum corps is in their hands. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Holland Posted October 1, 2022 Share Posted October 1, 2022 12 hours ago, Fran Haring said: Sure sounds like a "between a rock and a hard place" scenario for DCA. I don't think the "service only" option would keep DCA in business too much longer. Maybe DCA needs to adopt the mindset of numerous minor-league baseball teams, who know their product can't match that of the major-league level, but hustle to make up the difference by turning minor-league games into an overall "fun for the fans" experience with various promotions, giveaways, contests, and so forth? I don't know. I just wish my friends with DCA well, regardless of the decisions they make. The future of all-age drum corps is in their hands. That would be correct. DCI world knows it’s market. dci open is caught between being a service and experience. With the exception of 2 groups, the support and member stream is incredibly volatile year to year. DCA is caught in a different way. You have 2-3 who can sell the “DCI Lite” experience very well because they have the resources and membership stream to do so. The others all do the best to keep up with what they can scrape together. But as Jeff pointed out, while the faces on the field have changed due to many factors, the majority of faces in the stands have not. When you can’t grow your ticket buying audience, you eventually won’t be able to pay someone’s appearance fee. $3000-5000 in appearance fees isn’t sustainable with a shrinking audience. This is the conundrum. Less corps at a show means less appearance fees paid out, but also less potential ticket buyers. A half stadium, less than half full becomes “well this is cute” and no longer a cool activity attractive to newbies. It also can’t command a ticket prices required to break even on venue rental, operating costs, and appearance fees. I think there needs to be a deeper dive on what brings ticket buyers, versus what brings members. And some serious soul searching on costs of operations versus what dca can pay to its performing groups. Collectively it may be beneficial for no corps to accept appearance fees for a few seasons, but instead to use that possible revenue to revamp operations, pay for some full time operations and marketing staff, and to help bring new groups and new ticket buyers in to build show lineups back to where a $25 ticket fee is acceptable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Holland Posted October 1, 2022 Share Posted October 1, 2022 (edited) I guess in hindsight… If your major membership stream is high schoolers, what does that make the ticket buyer you are chasing? parents? Grandparents? Performer’s friends (who have much less disposable income than the parents)? In my experience, most of the performers’ friends are IN the corps with the performer, or on tour in DCI. When one performer decides “it’s time” to go try DCI, there’s a whole group of students that leave dca at once. Look at the stands capacity at the band championships which aren’t BOA. BOA is a destination event. So students are there for the weekend. They’re in town so they may as well go watch. Every other band championship is a fairly local event. The ticket buyer is parents and families. The bands often show up for their class, and head out after. As do the parents. Edited October 1, 2022 by C.Holland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Haring Posted October 3, 2022 Share Posted October 3, 2022 On 10/1/2022 at 10:43 AM, C.Holland said: Look at the stands capacity at the band championships which aren’t BOA. BOA is a destination event. So students are there for the weekend. They’re in town so they may as well go watch. Every other band championship is a fairly local event. The ticket buyer is parents and families. The bands often show up for their class, and head out after. As do the parents. Yep.. that was the exact scenario at the band championship shows I worked for YEA/US Bands. On Saturdays we'd usually have two awards ceremonies, since it was a long day with multiple classes. But once the first ceremony ended, out went the audience, and a new audience came in for their bands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted October 3, 2022 Share Posted October 3, 2022 13 hours ago, Fran Haring said: Yep.. that was the exact scenario at the band championship shows I worked for YEA/US Bands. On Saturdays we'd usually have two awards ceremonies, since it was a long day with multiple classes. But once the first ceremony ended, out went the audience, and a new audience came in for their bands. Gets more $$$. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Holland Posted October 4, 2022 Share Posted October 4, 2022 12 hours ago, Jeff Ream said: Gets more $$$. Maybe. I’d like to see the numbers of how many tix were actually sold. And how many of those sold tix stayed the full event. The event often looked watered down, from when I sat at recruiting tables. It looked poorly attended, and that the majority of parents stay home unless they’re chaperones or prop tarts. The stands are then filled with students waiting to cheer for their name. Not ticket buyers. the real point though, if dca wants to grow the ticket buying audience, they need to encourage a fun friendly product to sell, they need to fix programming of events, and they need to invite every group within an 8 hour drive to perform. Mini corps, sound sport, drum line, whatever. Make the ticket worth 25 or 35 bucks, and tell the corps who want big money to scale that back. Save that cash for marketing and operations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted October 4, 2022 Share Posted October 4, 2022 31 minutes ago, C.Holland said: Maybe. I’d like to see the numbers of how many tix were actually sold. And how many of those sold tix stayed the full event. The event often looked watered down, from when I sat at recruiting tables. It looked poorly attended, and that the majority of parents stay home unless they’re chaperones or prop tarts. The stands are then filled with students waiting to cheer for their name. Not ticket buyers. the real point though, if dca wants to grow the ticket buying audience, they need to encourage a fun friendly product to sell, they need to fix programming of events, and they need to invite every group within an 8 hour drive to perform. Mini corps, sound sport, drum line, whatever. Make the ticket worth 25 or 35 bucks, and tell the corps who want big money to scale that back. Save that cash for marketing and operations. you do get more money. why? you charge more. thats what the circuits do. they know parents aren't going to stay all day for multiple classes. they get to see their kids, see awards, and bolt. BOA is really the only band circuit that draws people that stay for the day. so the locals or regionals jack the price up to capitalize on it. tats how bands do it. my comment wasn't geared towards DCA. and lets be honest...streaming can't help DCA draw butts in the seats, but hopefully they are getting some cash that way. if it wasn't streamed, i wouldn't have been there in Rachacha. So they got something out of my they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, and i am sure i'm not the only one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Haring Posted October 4, 2022 Share Posted October 4, 2022 23 hours ago, Jeff Ream said: Gets more $$$. Sure does. And then add in those infernal Air Grams and so forth. LOL Thankfully, Air Grams are in my rear-view mirror. 😂 Hopefully for good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camel lips Posted October 4, 2022 Share Posted October 4, 2022 On 9/30/2022 at 8:07 PM, C.Holland said: DCA doesn’t know what it collectively wants to sell. If members show up to pay fees, it doesn’t matter if the stands are empty. Empty stands only hurt the corps who try to get the highest appearance fees, or it hurts the show if the show can’t afford them. If they reduce show demand, to create more fan friendly performances and to bring in lesser experienced performers, it may hurt their membership numbers as students don’t want to pay for an experience less than the experience they’re already paying for in high school or indoor. And Hence THIS is the problem they face the most I suspect and have for years. When I was marching MCL back in the day we had a certain number of performers who were either music educators or DCI age outs that wanted to do the cutting edge stuff and have high show demand to impress judges while there was a large amount of the paying membership that wanted to do fan friendly performances. Come family days when we would put on performances the cutting edge fru fru stuff fell flat and it was hard getting support. On the flip side of the coin when it came to recruiting at band contest the next year when it came to kiddos they did not want any part of the group because we had these weird instruments that were not bright and shiny and were not running around on the field doing loop da loops. So I really don't think there is much middle ground to be had. Pick your poison and roll with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted October 5, 2022 Share Posted October 5, 2022 On 10/4/2022 at 10:41 AM, Fran Haring said: Sure does. And then add in those infernal Air Grams and so forth. LOL Thankfully, Air Grams are in my rear-view mirror. 😂 Hopefully for good. so when i buy a band circuit and hire you, i'll have you start airgrams an hour before the first band Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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