[Dixielandjazz] Jazzfest "vOLUNTEERS"

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/30/04 10:10:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
williamhorton at peoplepc.com writes:

> I agree with Pat, also, about the Bottom Line being all-important on hiring 
> big names to increase attendance.  If a Big Name costs $50K and pulls in 500 
> additional patrons at $75 per head, forget it!  They'd have to pull at least 
> 675 additional bodies to warrant considering their hire.  Will they 
> GUARANTEE that many?  Does the festival have sites with seating capacities large 
> enough to accommodate that many?   I'm sure glad I've never had to make those 
> decisions!
> 
> 

Bill:
The Sacramento Jubilee has several adequate sites to accomodate such caliber 
acts, and no not all badge holders will buy a seperate ticket to see any 
specific headline act, but if you buy the right act they should draw you their own 
audience ( we are talking supplemental alternative music not strictly 
Dixieland Jazz with this act.)

Like, a  Tony Bennett,  B.B. King, Herbie Hancock, Al Jerreau, Bobby McFerrin 
 etc.

You might have a miniature Blues festival within the festival, there are many 
ways to use Headline acts and increase the attendance and the revenues with 
them paying their own way from added ticket sales to folks who are not coming 
to hear Dixieland, but would attend the event to see someone they like.   The 
Dicxieland badge fans can always not attend those events, and it will not make 
a difference one way or the other.

If you have a major show in say a 1000 seat venue, it is safe to believe you 
can fill t up with ticket buyers from the 30 to 40 thousand badge holders.

Most of the major headliners in the $50,000.00 range are going to draw you 
3,500 to 6000 paying customers not 500 as you projected.   That is why they make 
that kind of money.
When you do your homework looking for the right headline act you look at 
where thay have been performing, how much were the ticket prices, how many tickets 
did they sell and on what night they sold them.   These are some of the 
things that allow you to make educated and informed decisions about who is a 
headliner and who is not.

It is a numbers game, the days of promoting events by putting up $500.00 and 
making $10,000.00 profit in one day are gone.   The business has gotten far to 
sophisticated to allow anyone to get away with that again.   This ain't the 
pet Rock story.

Any Big Name Headline act that can charge and get $50,000.00 is getting that 
kind of fee because they know they can draw you $100,000.00 in ticket sales.

If the event producer does not know this or know how to figure out whether or 
not the act is worth that kind of money they have no business even talking to 
the act.  Letting such talent bookers book for your event is suicide and gets 
the organization ripped off by an unscrupulous agent who will take money from 
an unsophisticated talent buyer all day long.

The State and county fairs are a classic example of this happening every day, 
they are an agents playground of unsophisticated buyers.

Talent buyers should be skilled in the fine art of negotiation for the best 
deal, most professional concert promoters work on a basis of about an 11 to 15% 
of the gross as a net profit.  This means that you had better have your 
expenses for production and advertising and promotion well tuned and know what the 
hell you are doing or you can very well lose a lot of money very quickly.

The key word here is "Promotion" you have to promote the hell out of an 
event, you buy a Headline act to hedge your bet and bring you a reasonably 
estimated number of paid customers to bring in enough money to pay the act and cover 
you overhead, somewhere between 60 & 80 % of the gross.

Now you need to budget about 20% of the potential gross for promotion and 
advertising and production costs, reserve up to 60% for the talent that the folks 
are paying to see and that should attract sufficient numbers of patrons to 
support the event.

If you can keep your expenses and overhead under control 40% of the gross 
should prove enough money to cover all the expenses and pay for the headline and 
supporting talent and expenses and leave you with about a 20% potential 
profit.  If you can't keep your margin within this reach you are not operating 
efficiently and are spending way too much money somewhere other than the cost of 
the talent.

The headline talent should and will in most cases with the exception of a 
disaster of some kind pull their own weight at the box office and not actually 
cost you anything, you should make money on them if you do it correctly.  They 
do not mind if you do because if you do you will more than likely hire them 
again and pay them their fair share.

For OKOM festivals I don't believe you need to buy a $50,000.00 act either 
except for certain circumstances, there are many excellent acts available in the 
$5,000 to 15,000.00 range that will spread out the risks better and draw you 
an even more diverse audience while giving your festival a boost in quality 
and gross ticket sales.

A good rule of thumb is to look at every given event mathematically and see 
if you can promote the event properly and break even with about 50 to 60 % of 
capacity, if you can see that this is possible chances are pretty good that you 
can do it and make a profit.

The same thing applies if you have a track record of how many badges you 
consistently sell each year then you can take that gross figure and back into the 
realistic expenses for grossing that amount of money and the costs of selling 
that number of badges.

In the event it becomes overly lopsided on one side or the other then 
something is wrong and you need to address the excessive costs being incurred and 
find a way to bring hem back into line with the proposed budget.

example:   If you want to spend fifty Thousand for headline attractions,

Buy a proven Blues act in the $10,000 range, or buy four of them in the 
$5,000.00 each range.

Research and find a good Jazz headliner in the same range there are hundreds 
of them out there.  But you have to do your homework and find out which ones 
are potentially right for your marketplace, just because they are a big name 
does not mean they will fill your event.  The festival or promoter needs to know 
what he/she is doing.

The fairs that I mentioned above are notorious for buying whatever an agent 
pushes on them for whatever price the agent wants, being very gullible and 
unsophisticated they start by telling the agent what their allotted budget is for 
this year.  Wrong, the agent will quickly spend it all on his acts that he 
wants to push and they may or may not be the right acts for their fair.  This is 
bad news for the act and the fair when they don't have an audience or the 
wrong audience and the gig turns into the gig from Hell for the act.  

The agent is a salesman, ( a good salesman has no conscience) and his primary 
job is to sell the act to anybody he can for as much money as he can get, if 
your talent buyer knows how to buy and negotiate there are many good deals 
available, but you have to know what your doing to get them. 

Concessions and food and beverage should be additional sources of profitable 
revenues if operated properly.

Hope this shed some additional light on the subject for those who wish to use 
it.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins