Someone does. Most items for the show are prepaid with the hope of making it back with tickets sales. The convention is usually paid up front in payments with it totally paid for at least 48 hours before the show. Then usually (not sure if here but at other places) their is another deposit of $5,000 to $10,000 tha can be put on your credit card for costs incurred at the show that were unforeseen in the estimate. Like overtime, lighting addtions and sound, additonal chairs or staging or whatever. Plus there is the drayage charge and whatever else. Most of this show was paid for by sponsorship dollars. VYOtech put up the $25,000 1st prize and apparently paid for the Hummer (which I still don't believe). Boss put up 2nd prize I think. BB.com gave $5,000 I think. Those are the major sponsors. The rest are considered minor or $2,000 and under. Allot of the sponsors listed were bartered or donated or traded. Unlike me I am sure Sean did not have an official Travel Agency where for every so many flights booked you recieve one. Not sure about the hotel deal, but from the lack of crowd and visitors outside of Denver his hotel deal was probably not very good. Usually you block a certain number of rooms and you get a certain number of rooms night free if you fill them. Hopefully he got some room nights free for just the promotion the hotel received butnot many. The pays for Manion and whoever else he brings to come to the show. Anyway, someone American Express card was used allot. I hope it wasn't Jeff Taylors. It would be fair for him. All those trips to Denver too Sean took have to be paid for too. But who knows VYOtech has the money Hydroderm (or whatever) has. They (Vyotech) certaininly do not have the sales to support a show like this to many more times.
Good breakdown.
You and I both know, however, that Shawn got all the financing secured - cash in hand - before going full force with the promotion of this event. He threw around the idea of doing his own show, got some feedback, found a bigtime sponsor, and decided that - since he had never promoted before - it would be best to team up with an established and well-respected promoter like Jeff Taylor. Once he had enough big sponsor money to cover sanctioning, prizes, judges, and venue, he then got down to the business of selling other sponsorships (includes expo spaces).
I'd be surprised if Shawn & Jeff had more than $25,000 of their own money at risk going into the weekend and their gate receipts were sufficient for them to get that back. This is all supposition of my part, and I don't expect anyone to confirm the numbers I'm throwing out, but it stands to reason - assuming a round figure of $250,000 for the weekend - that they'd have 90% of that covered by sponsors.
I booked my own flight, but did stay at the host hotel. Other than the competitors, there really weren't many show attendees there. The normal rooms were $120 and the suites were $250, which wasn't bad at all for the location. There probably weren't that many nights comped for the promoters based on the room-nights we provided. But that's a small thing, because the price was right.
All the exhibitors I spoke with were pleased with the turnout and most indicated they would return in 2007. As a promoter, you cannot ask for much more than that.
