[IVFDF] Re: Whither IVFDF - Costs of Tickets for Students

[Mason, Richard]

There are 3 basic ways to make an event more profitable.
1) Reduce Costs
2) Charge more
3) Get more people to attend.

There seems to a lot of discussion about putting prices up without
examining
the other ways of working.  In Exeter in both 1995 and 1999 we
concentrated
on reducing our costs where we could, and especially on getting more
bodies
through the door.

Costs tend to fall into 4 areas
1) Bands
2) Workshops
3) Rooms
4) Publicity

Bands:
If you scrimp too much on bands, then you will reduce your attendance.  So
we booked a few high profile names which would be attractive to a wide
audience.

Workshops:
Workshops are an area where some savings can be made, especially if the
committee have some good contacts and you can call in a few favours.  We
identified certain 'feature' workshops which we would pay good money to
get,
and then made up the others with friends and members of the Exeter group
with special skills.

Rooms:
Always the biggest expense.  However if you have a good negotiating
committee, you can get university authorities to move on their initial
quotes.  We managed to beat them down from some very scary numbers to
something that we could live with - approximately £1500 less than their
initial assessment.  Our university did all the catering and provided the
bars, and made a good profit from it (it must have been good - because
they
wouldn't tell us how much they had made!).  You don't want to guarantee
numbers for catering (that way lies ruin), but if you can offer the
university ways of making money or raising its profile, then you quickly
buy
yourself in to a bargaining position.

Publicity:
Never cut this cost.  You can put on the best festival in the world, but
unless you tell everyone about it, what is the point?  Advertise heavily
in
your local area, you will get the locals in to a few events - often paying
your waged prices.  Good advertising always pays - just look at the amount
spent in advertising music outside the folk world.  Why should folk be so
different ?

The cost/ income balance is a difficult one to get, but it can't be got by
just putting up prices.  You have to provide events that people want to go
to, at a price that they can afford, and tell them that its on.  If you do
these three things, then you have a smiling committee at the end of the
weekend.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Knight [mailto:t.knight at optichrome.com]
Sent: 18 April 2000 17:20
To: ivfdf-news at tardis.ed.ac.uk
Subject: [IVFDF] Re: Whither IVFDF - Costs of Tickets for Students




> -----Original Message-----
> From: ivfdf-news-bounce at tardis.ed.ac.uk
> [mailto:ivfdf-news-bounce at tardis.ed.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
> chris.j.broan at bnfl.com
> Sent: 18 April 2000 16:56
> To: ivfdf-news at tardis.ed.ac.uk
> Subject: [IVFDF] Re: Whither IVFDF - Costs of Tickets for Students
>
>
> On a different note: I would like to keep IVFDF in a uni' town as they
are
> a
> lot easier to get to than any other possible venue. There aren't a lot
of
> towns left that do not have a university in them. If a town has a
> university
> in them then a lot more trains stop there.
>
> What about universities without towns round them- like Warwick etc?
>  The key factor to my mind is public transport access, not whether
there's
> a university nearby.

I was going to post a very sarcastic reply, but with the same essence,
mentioning the stunning rail access to St Andrews. You have you wonder
what
the original message actaully means - it looks as if all the sender is
saying is "let's put IVFDF in a large town or a city". If this is the case
then the university train of thought it irrelevant at best.

I _would_ like to see IVFDF kept in universities, hosted by a university
dance society. That, to me is the essence of the festival. It's sad that
this isn't becoming so viable. On another note, how many university dance
side are there now - with students making up the majority of members?

On the other note, I do believe that this festival should be kept cheap
for
students. If we have it in the far north or the far south, then we'll lose
some possible attendees through cost anyway - let's not exacerbate this by
raising prices for those who very possibly can't afford it.

Naturally, if the cost of the festival is increasing, in order to keep the
festival profitable, the costs must be passed on to someone - by
elimination
it's the non-students!
I am certainly happy to pay (some) more to attend IVFDF, but I'm sure some
wouldn't find it so easy to get away it the prices went up too much...

We could of course have a means-tested attendance fee?  ;-)







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