Where will the growth take place?

[KVG_DC]

People in high places like reading trash too.  😆

[DAYGO]

1 hour ago, KVG_DC said:

People in high places like reading trash too.  😆

100%

[Jeff Ream]

5 hours ago, KVG_DC said:

People in high places like reading trash too.  😆

treat them nice they give you inside info too

[KVG_DC]

22 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

treat them nice they give you inside info too

I've never gotten inside info.  @Terri Schehr tells me stories and @Chief Guns and I swap some tea.  Occasionally someone tells me some tidbits about a corps' on the tour end of season show closer change plans but they're usually things everyone else already knows it seems.

[OldSnareDrummer]

12 minutes ago, KVG_DC said:

I've never gotten inside info.  @Terri Schehr tells me stories and @Chief Guns and I swap some tea.  Occasionally someone tells me some tidbits about a corps' on the tour end of season show closer change plans but they're usually things everyone else already knows it seems.

You know @TheOneWhoKnows? I'm the OneWhoKnowsDiddlySquat. And truthfully, there's probably a lot I don't want to know. 

[cixelsyd]

On 12/9/2025 at 9:37 AM, olddrummer34 said:

After reading this entire thread, what’s most striking isn’t the concern about growth, it’s how desperately some people seem to want the activity to be dying. 

Suffice it to say, I am not one of those "some people" (whoever they are).

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The obsession with “growth” as only meaning more corps, more shows, more everything is also intellectually lazy.

Okay.  To be more precise, "growth" has to affect either of the two essential resources of the activity - people and money. 

Maybe it is intellectually lazy to suggest that more corps = more people, or that more shows = more money.  But those are likely to correlate.  Feel free to dispute that.

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Growth can mean new formats, regionalization, all-age expansion, media reach, educational partnerships, and diversified revenue. But those forms of growth don’t fit the 1997 mental model, so they get dismissed as failure.

I see.  Taking these one by one:

- If some other activity replaces this one, just call it a "new format" and claim credit for "growth".  Oh look, 10,000 marching bands - "growth"!  Am I doing it right?

- Regionalization only works if we have more corps.  But that is 1997 thinking.

- All-age expansion?  We have 14; their all-time low is 12.  I suppose any amount of growth is good, but this might be too early for spiking the football.

- Media reach is steadily growing everywhere; media impact is steadily diluting everywhere.  It is intellectually lazy to evaluate one without the other.

- We have been doing educational partnerships since the 1930s.  But what does that have to do with growth?

- Diversified revenue sounds nice.  But has the amount of revenue grown?  Or are we diversifying because our direct/earned revenue sources could not be adequately grown?

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What’s especially exhausting is how little respect this narrative has for the people actually doing the work. There are thousands of members, instructors, designers, administrators, and volunteers actively building the activity right now, safely, professionally, and at a higher standard than ever.

If you want to show appreciation for the members, instructors, designers, administrators, and volunteers still involved as of December 11, 2025, go start a thread for that.  Or several threads.  There are many excellent people involved who have done many excellent things.

This thread is about growth. 

Frankly, the challenges that stand in the way of growth are mostly systemic, not personal... so I do not see such a discussion as disrespectful to the people who must work within that system.

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If the activity truly were dying, people wouldn’t be fighting this hard about it. The fact that they are is the strongest evidence that it isn’t.

if by "fighting", you mean here on this forum... the number of optimists is at a frightening new low.

[Slingerland]

On 12/9/2025 at 8:07 AM, drumcorpsfever said:

Is there a world in which the summer season for DCI gets scrapped altogether and the activity moves to BOA honor/super bands? 

More likely is that the number of corps competing on the national tour (the World Class model) winnows down to 12 to 14 stalwarts. 3 or 4 of them will have the very best performers out there, the rest will have the kids who can afford $7000-10,000 for summer band (and we're getting close to the $7k number already with some corps' published 2026 tour fees). If nothing else changes, then eventually even those 12 to 14 units will likely lose some passengers along the way, and there'll be 8 to 10 corps who have the funding mechanisms to keep playing, though you'd need pretty much all of them to be on the same tour all summer in order to have even 10 or 12 contests.

Whether the other WC corps whose Boards opt out of the DCI model decide to do something else or just close the doors is open to question, though if they start doing the numbers, it might make sense to bag on summer, raise $200-$400k per season for a really good indoor group, and call it good.

Something will definitely happen, and it will not be what we have now.

Edited December 12, 2025 by Slingerland

[RiverCityAndTroopersFan]

1 hour ago, Slingerland said:

More likely is that the number of corps competing on the national tour (the World Class model) winnows down to 12 to 14 stalwarts. 3 or 4 of them will have the very best performers out there, the rest will have the kids who can afford $7000-10,000 for summer band (and we're getting close to the $7k number already with some corps' published 2026 tour fees). If nothing else changes, then eventually even those 12 to 14 units will likely lose some passengers along the way, and there'll be 8 to 10 corps who have the funding mechanisms to keep playing, though you'd need pretty much all of them to be on the same tour all summer in order to have even 10 or 12 contests.

Whether the other WC corps whose Boards opt out of the DCI model decide to do something else or just close the doors is open to question, though if they start doing the numbers, it might make sense to bag on summer, raise $200-$400k per season for a really good indoor group, and call it good.

Something will definitely happen, and it will not be what we have now.

I think in a few years we will see our first (or second technically) world class corps try to drop down to open class.

[pags]

I'm not casting an opinion on whether this is a good or bad thing (just where I see it going), but I see DCI transitioning into more of a WGI-Winds or Drum Corps Japan model where the ensembles are smaller and the activity moves more and more indoors.  Summer heat and stadium availability issues seem to be rising, leading to performer safety and performance opportunity issues, respectively.  Travel costs (# of vehicles, fuel, insurance, etc.) are only going to continue to rise, as are wellness costs (food/beverage, safe place to stay, etc.).  I don't see the current model, with the number of performers per unit (not to mention props, etc.) that require so many vehicles and so much maintenance cost being tenable in the increasingly-expensive environment the world currently exists in.  

It may seem antithetical to a "growth" mindset, but I think it may be necessary to go smaller, and make itself more nimble to hedge against the costs.  

[Jeff Ream]

11 minutes ago, RiverCityAndTroopersFan said:

I think in a few years we will see our first (or second technically) world class corps try to drop down to open class.

no way. why? the financial side of it. OC doesn't get the $$ WC does, even if you're 19th place. How Spartans ran those tours the last few years on OC fees, and got themselves in to WC amazes me