What's in a Field?

[cybersnyder]

Seating capacity in arenas is lower than I thought. 15k-20k in general and only 1/4-1/3 of those seats would be desirable for a corps style show. So, you can cut expenses going smaller, but revenue will likely drop along with attendance even if everyone likes it as much as football stadiums.

[Glenn426]

2 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

Well, just doing a quick search, I'm seeing prices to rent a stadium for a football game here in Ohio in the range of $2,000-$4,000.

Whats the Seating capacity? Those shows might be good for local shows in mid week but DCI wants proper performance venues that offer height and concessions and amenities to accommodate a DCI crowd.

That means that the average cost skyrocket once you are renting the College Outdoor Football Stadiums and the NFL Football Stadiums for your Regionals.

Plus at those outdoor shows you always have the chance of being rained out. Indoor Arenas wont have that problem and even at the smaller NHL/ NBA Arenas you could seat 5000 on one side of the stadium and charge a premium over the average HS stadium. Even at an average price of $40 per seat @ 5000 people that's 200,000 in revenue from one event. 

[cybersnyder]

This is the only NBA contract I could find. The NBA teams will be given sweetheart deals and should be mostly even across teams as they want to keep their teams. Thunder pays $40k / game for the stadium and other costs listed. I'm not sure DCI would get as good of a deal for a one off indoor drum corps show. 

https://law.marquette.edu/assets/sports-law/pdf/lease-summary-oklahoma-city-thunder.pdf

[Jeff Ream]

32 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Oh come on concrete roof, concrete floor, concrete walls... we had about 30 horns and about 12-15 drums playing while Keystone Games athletes came to the floor of the arena. Great lesson in acoustics as echo went down the more bodies came out to absorb the sound....

Farm Show building is worse and they hold concerts there!

[Jeff Ream]

31 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

Well, just doing a quick search, I'm seeing prices to rent a stadium for a football game here in Ohio in the range of $2,000-$4,000.

right. but marching musics major league needs the best stadiums possible!!!

[Jeff Ream]

23 minutes ago, cybersnyder said:

Seating capacity in arenas is lower than I thought. 15k-20k in general and only 1/4-1/3 of those seats would be desirable for a corps style show. So, you can cut expenses going smaller, but revenue will likely drop along with attendance even if everyone likes it as much as football stadiums.

or you jack prices up

[garfield]

1 hour ago, Glenn426 said:

Expenses.

Its a big topic on this board and many say that DCI costs are spiraling out of control. So I started to look at what is driving cost up through the roof. I started to look at the DCI's 990 to look at what their actual costs and expenses are. Pulling up their 2018 990 here ( https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/362754480/201902739349300235/full ) you can find that in 2018 DCI spent $6,550,694 on Show Expenses (cost of renting facilities) Looking at their calendar they put on 108 shows in 2018 between WC, OC and Soundsport shows. If you average that out, they Spent $60,654 per show for the DCI tour. That's an insane amount of money for a Non-profit organization to put out to put on these shows.

<snip>

Everything that came after this opening paragraph needs to be rethought after you calculate in to your analysis the fact that you conflated "Show Expenses" to be the "cost of renting facilities".  That's not correct.

The big elephant included in that total of about $6.55mm is the cost of the corps.  Memory fades with age but, IIRC, something along the lines of $2.5mm to $3mm of DCI's revenue gets paid out to drum corps as "performance fees" (called all manner of things in the actual DCI record-keeping, I suspect).  You can cut costs on stadium facilities (good luck) but, to cut that $3mm paid out to corps, the corps voting membership has to agree to cut their own pay.  GOOD LUCK!  I'd bet they pound the crap out of that expense statement before they agree to cut their own pay.  You'll have those cost no matter where they play.  In fact, it's true that the ED's job is to negotiate the very best deal with the stadiums, et al, for the strict benefit of the member corps, not for the benefit (currently) of DCI's income statement.  What they save in negotiation is, and should be, paid out the to corps.  (This is a whole-other discussion!)

Still, after correcting your numbers down to around $35,000 to rent an "average" stadium, that also makes sense.  No, N.E. Brigand, it doesn't cost $35m to rent an average high school stadium but it also costs a whole lot more than $35m to rent your average professional domed football stadium, too.  Just do some simple deductive thought using, say $75m to rent Alamo (I truly have no clue) and logically crank that up to, say $125m PER DAY to rent LOS (again, I have NO idea) and you can easily see that four very expensive regional stadiums can lower significantly the average cost per high school stadium.  Do HS facilities "cost" $20m to $25m to host drum corps?  Yep, you bet.  And the big, new fancy Texas stadiums are probably much more.

Now, I very much appreciate your thought process and I'll anticipate following your rationale after you've corrected your thoughts with these corrections. 

This issue stumped me and a bunch of others for a day or so in a 990 discussion years ago until I discovered that "paying" the drum corps is an expense on DCI's income statement.  Show revenue is income, paying for corps and paying for stadiums (and all the rest) show up as expenses.  If you scan all of the expense lines, you'll not find any entry line item that identifies "corps pay" or any such thing on the 990.  It's buried in "Show Expense".

The only thing I see in the '18 990 that could be dubious is the ubiquitous "all other expenses" category that collected just under $1mm.  OK, that's not huge but it is a little under 10% of their expenses.  "Other Expenses" is always for things one deliberately wants to hide or, more likely, "When There's No Place Else To Put Something"  -- on the 990 form.  That DOESN'T mean that they've not identified those expenses, it's that there's no place on the 990 filing to report them.

You know, like strip clubs, expensive steak houses, and private jets to San Antonio.  (I'm KIDDING!!)

 

 

I think it's illustrative to look at the numbers in comparison to others.  For example, how has that number ("corps pay") changed across 990s?  

[cybersnyder]

8 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

or you jack prices up

Yeah, I guess concerts would have similar seating as an indoor DCI event. Would people pay Jason Aldean money for DCI? 

[N.E. Brigand]

2 minutes ago, garfield said:

Still, after correcting your numbers down to around $35,000 to rent an "average" stadium, that also makes sense.  No, N.E. Brigand, it doesn't cost $35,000 to rent an average high school stadium, but it also costs a whole lot more than $35,000 to rent your average professional domed football stadium, too.  Just do some simple deductive thought using, say $75,000 to rent Alamo (I truly have no clue) and logically crank that up to, say $125,000 PER DAY to rent LOS (again, I have NO idea) and you can easily see that four very expensive regional stadiums can lower significantly the average cost per high school stadium.  Do HS facilities "cost" $20,000 to $25,000 to host drum corps?  Yep, you bet.  And the big, new fancy Texas stadiums are probably much more.

If your figures are right, and your typical high school (outside of Texas) is renting its stadium to DCI for $25,000 per performance, then Glenn would be correct that the $20,000 he says it costs to rent an arena is indeed less for a comparable seating number.

But I do find that very hard to believe.

How much does just the A/C cost in an arena?

[Jeff Ream]

3 minutes ago, cybersnyder said:

Yeah, I guess concerts would have similar seating as an indoor DCI event. Would people pay Jason Aldean money for DCI? 

for a non finals show? doubt it