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It is time for the business of the activity to evolve


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On 8/22/2019 at 6:34 PM, SuperSaderFan said:

My topic is to encourage the growth of the activity and taking advantage of our scale. I  know what Inspire Arts & Music has done in attracting corporate sponsorships. Like my Dad taught me, all you can do is ask and they either say yes or no. Lets stick with the facts and go from there:

Our activity positively impacts thousands of kids per year. They are the hardest working activity I am aware of and they pay to do it. I  am sure that health and fitness companies would be interested in supporting.

Regionals and Championships bring in millions of dollars to major cities - what are we getting for that?

Why doesn't DCI partner with BOA and leverage running events for multiple seasons?

Scale purchasing for transportation, equipment, food, souvies etc.

Follow the NFL model of all ticket revenue, souvies sales be collected centrally and distributed equally.

 

On 8/22/2019 at 7:27 PM, SuperSaderFan said:

I   also think we should expand the membership of each world class corps to 200 and create an additional performance group/training/reserve group of members for each corps. Incremental spend for each group leveraging existing resources. Also creates additional acts for each show. Perhaps a different kind of show/concert group but double the acts. You could run a show with 4 corps and 8 acts. Would not look to replace open class.

I went back looking for the last post from the OP and found these.  I'm sorry I didn't give these more attention all those posts ago.

With apologies to the OP, there are other interesting thoughts here besides central purchasing.

 

Edited by garfield
To clean up some empty space
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17 hours ago, rpbobcat said:

I know there have been a couple of stories about this happening during the season.

Do you if it happens frequently ?

As far as it affecting "drop offs"/"pick ups" of supplies,logistically I

wouldn't expect "drop offs" to individual corps at housing sites.

I'd look at a more centralized location at/near show sites.

 

 

it seems to be an increasing phenomena

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On 8/22/2019 at 7:27 PM, SuperSaderFan said:

I   also think we should expand the membership of each world class corps to 200 and create an additional performance group/training/reserve group of members for each corps. Incremental spend for each group leveraging existing resources. Also creates additional acts for each show. Perhaps a different kind of show/concert group but double the acts. You could run a show with 4 corps and 8 acts. Would not look to replace open class.

Sounds like you are suggesting each WC corps develop a 50-member SoundSport group that would do the same tour as the parent corps.  Did I read that correctly?

Since many existing shows already have 8-12 corps filling the schedule, how do you imagine things shifting to accommodate these groups?  More shows?  Less parent corps?

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13 hours ago, garfield said:

My topic is to encourage the growth of the activity and taking advantage of our scale. I  know what Inspire Arts & Music has done in attracting corporate sponsorships. Like my Dad taught me, all you can do is ask and they either say yes or no. Lets stick with the facts and go from there:

Our activity positively impacts thousands of kids per year. They are the hardest working activity I am aware of and they pay to do it. I  am sure that health and fitness companies would be interested in supporting.

Regionals and Championships bring in millions of dollars to major cities - what are we getting for that?

Why doesn't DCI partner with BOA and leverage running events for multiple seasons?

Scale purchasing for transportation, equipment, food, souvies etc.

Follow the NFL model of all ticket revenue, souvies sales be collected centrally and distributed equally.

From my quote of the OP's post...

A few comments...

It's very true that sponsorship dollars are useful, if not sticky, and that all one has to do is ask.  But I wonder when the activity will mature beyond "begging and bingo" and begin to generate revenue outside of the stadium and not necessarily using the member talent.  Instead, create businesses that support partially or entirely the talent that the members have developed.

Every travel baseball, field hockey, and summer travel soccer team can say the same about their impact on kids each year, and Under Armor, for one, has said they're not interested because band doesn't match their target market.  Health and fitness companies go after athletes and not in a recent decade has DCI devoted energy to demonstrating that MM's are athletes.  Drum corps has a HUGE wall to climb to teach people and the MM's are strong athletes and performers, and that people shouldn't run through our ranks.

Regionals and Championships bring the same benefits to DCI as any other "convention" coming to town.  Rent on stadiums, blocks of rooms to sell, and all the "Welcome Drum Corps Fans" they can convince the city to hang.  Conventions like DCI are a cost to the participants; there might be deals to be made but there's no money to be made just because our circus is rolling into town.  Maybe bulk purchases of hotel rooms across the whole tour might lead to better deals in the host cities for regionals and finals.

I think there's a deeper, intriguing story around the relationship between DCI, WGI, and BOA.  I don't know the details but I think your question might be answered in that story if you can find it.

All ticket revenue is collected centrally now.  Souvie sales?  My hunch is would be one thing for DCI to provide group-negotiating, but unlikely that they'd run all the souvie sales. There are comments elsewhere in this thread about PepWare taking over sales for four corps and bundled them all together in similar-looking tents on tour and at finals.  It's likely that PepWare would be willing to run the whole souvie thing for a cost that would apply to the corps themselves.  If that's greater cost (or lower service) than what the corps do themselves on their shoestring budgets, it's likely DCI will struggle to centralize it.

 

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3 hours ago, cixelsyd said:

I   also think we should expand the membership of each world class corps to 200 and create an additional performance group/training/reserve group of members for each corps. Incremental spend for each group leveraging existing resources. Also creates additional acts for each show. Perhaps a different kind of show/concert group but double the acts. You could run a show with 4 corps and 8 acts. Would not look to replace open class.

Would you please explain your thought above?  True, they don't have to buy a new cook truck, but a corps with 200 MM's still requires more cooks, more food, more space, more everything.  True, they don't have to buy a new instrument truck, except if their existing truck is fitted for 150.  I'm not sure that I see any dramatic "savings" by using existing resources if those resources are now taxed to their limit.  Maybe I'm missing your point.

And I'm kind of with cixelsyd here, are you suggesting two, separate show productions with the extra MMs or, in your vision, are they as much "alternates" as they are performers separately?

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On 8/22/2019 at 10:29 AM, SuperSaderFan said:

If DCI is the major league of the marching arts, why don't we approach it that way? In other major leagues:

Uniforms & Equipment are bid out and awarded to one company for all teams. This provides for economies of scale and financial benefits.

It's time that we run the activity with the smarts of a business and the heart of a non profit.

Wow, only if someone had considered that 20 years ago and started an organization that involved 3-5 corps in an attempt to scale this and maybe since these organizations involved the arts education of youth and someone could come up with a snazzy name for it.

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25 minutes ago, garfield said:

Would you please explain your thought above?  True, they don't have to buy a new cook truck, but a corps with 200 MM's still requires more cooks, more food, more space, more everything.  True, they don't have to buy a new instrument truck, except if their existing truck is fitted for 150.  I'm not sure that I see any dramatic "savings" by using existing resources if those resources are now taxed to their limit.  Maybe I'm missing your point.

And I'm kind of with cixelsyd here, are you suggesting two, separate show productions with the extra MMs or, in your vision, are they as much "alternates" as they are performers separately?

How did your quote of SuperSaderFan get attributed to me?

Good questions, though.  I think the phrase "incremental spend" overstates things.  It may seem easier to add people to a corps vs. creating a whole other corps, but most costs do ramp up in proportion to the number of members.  

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44 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

Good questions, though.  I think the phrase "incremental spend" overstates things.  It may seem easier to add people to a corps vs. creating a whole other corps, but most costs do ramp up in proportion to the number of members.  

Corps size should be the maximum number of members you can fit into n buses without needing to go to n+1 buses where the last bus is partially filled. And that number will vary based on the bus company used and how their vehicles are outfitted. Was also thinking that woodwinds are usually lower cost members because they being their own instruments with the exception of Bari sax, usually. Nah, just raise fees.

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2 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

Corps size should be the maximum number of members you can fit into n buses without needing to go to n+1 buses where the last bus is partially filled.  

Do not some of a corps volunteers fill some of the empty seats now?

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Just now, Ghost said:

Do not some of a corps volunteers fill some of the empty seats now?

Sure, and those would be added into the equation, but just trying to point out that if you were to increase corps size by, say 20 members and that resulted in needing another bus, it's very likely that your per member transportation costs could increase rather than decrease.

 

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