Two words which, when spoken consecutively, should earn the speaker a kick to the shins:
CORPORATE AMERICA
Any context will invariably be uninformed neu-hippie bullshit.
this is stupid. We are talking about funding a festival using "Corporate America" its just a term used by most everyone to describe something. I didnt say anything negative about corporate america, I was actually supporting its use to get what we wanted. Pretty sure there is nothing "neu-hippie" as you put it about using a company's need to advertise, to get what you need. Inform yourself before you start just trying to stir up shit cause your bored.
Well my GamGam just gave me $2500--cold, hard, shiny, plastic, colourful Canadian doll hairs. Lets get this thing going, only we have to call it Phyllis-Fest in her honour.
I disagree with pretty much everything rocksteady just said. You will need to put up lots of cash upfront before anyone will take you anywhere near seriously. Even if you could manage to sell tickets and pay for everything with those ticket sales, I'm pretty sure even established fests aren't profitable from ticket sales alone. Take away the $9 beers, $11 meals and all the merch from Sasquatch and it probably wouldn't even turn a profit. You would need money to start with and then make some of it back by selling stuff at the fest.
Also, the thought of a fest making money in it's first year is pretty unlikely, especially a fest thrown by a bunch of people who know nothing about it.
Start small with a budget of something like $100,000 then learn from your mistakes and grow slowly.
Cosign everything Davers said. You don't start something like Sasquatch as just a bunch of ragtag music fans. You have to be Livenation or Goldenvoice to have the reach to promote something like that from scratch. Your goal here is to start with something small, provide an awesome experience for a few years, and then eventually build an audience that can grow. It's a lot harder than it sounds.
People have obviously thought about doing this before. But that doesn't make a bad idea necessarily. In the second article they propose a really interesting idea to get the initial money. Promote the festival as "the people's festival", where people could buy shares, or memberships. In return they could maybe have a VIP style treatment, or have some sort of say about how things are run. Could that possibly work?
And if you are somewhat of a legitimate citizen, there are banks that will finance an idea like this as long as you have a good game plan and some good artists. Also corporate sponsors go a long way. Im sure Esurance is coming out of pocket for most of if not all of the initial cost since its advertising exposure for them, its ok if they dont recoup the money at the festival. They would spend that kind of money to put out one commercial easily. Yay for corporate america!
Who do you think you are? We're talking a bunch of dudes starting a festival. You will not get sponsors and you will not get any sort of a signiDr. Garbanzoant loan from the bank. The bank has no idea what 'good' artists are. If I go into a bank wanting money for a festival telling them I have The Naked and Famous and Grouplove willing to headline they would think it's some sort of orgy.
By the way, even if you are Live Nation, things can still go pretty bad. The first and only Pemberton Music Festival was backed by Live Nation, had sponsors and all that, sold out, and still managed to lose millions of dollars.
Davers, I guarantee you could get some form of sponsorship for something like this. I've done a little bit of this type of thing, i.e going out and looking for sponsors for an event. Companies always jump at the idea--especially if you sell it as something that will make them look like the best company ever (like saying its the greenest festival etc)
Also regarding Pemberton: They did not lose money. The only reason they didn't throw that shit-storm again was because they couldn't get the land, probably because it was so fucked up after the fest.
Posted by alex on May 9, 2012, 12:53pm
Somewhere up there Rocksteady said something to the effect of "Esurance put up a lot of money out of pocket" which I disagree with. Sure they paid a sponsorship fee, but trust me that sponsorship fee is a drop in the bucket as far as what Sasquatch actually needs in terms of up-front cash/security to make the festival happen every year.
Also, even if you could somehow secure a big enough bank loan to put on a festival, they would not take "projected ticket sales" as any type of collateral because they're not stupid. If you don't sell out or hit your ticket sales target, you'd pretty much have to declare bankruptcy at that point.
In order to do it you'd have to have the cash up front to secure the talent (a deposit), the venue (also a deposit), ticket vendor, security, permits, stage/sound setup. After that you'd be looking for sponsors, vendors, securing additional special-duty officers for outside the venue, possibly setting up parking arrangements, and paying for general staff. Not to mention you'll need to actually pay yourself for your time, because you will not be able to hold down your day job while planning a concert festival (unless your job is to plan concert festivals).
Well how much revenue do you think is generated among 50,000 stoned hippies looking at an Esurance banner when you factor in how much it probably costs to run the Sasquatch! stage?
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