The City Beat got a hold of Alerus Center chief Steve Hyman today and, though I couldn’t get any Britney Spears numbers out of him because they are still being tallied, he seemed pretty excited about the amount of money the events center estimated it made.
"The ancillary income will blow your socks off," he said. It’s "way over six figures," he said.
I’m assuming he means high six-figures, which could mean anything from $600,000 to $999,999. Heck, if that’s really the case, that would blow my socks off.
Ancillary income is money that isn’t from ticket sales and it’s the main way venues make money from concerts. That income includes food and beverage; novelty, meaning T-shirts and the like; parking fees; and facility fees, meaning that fee you pay on top of the actual ticket price.
Readers will remember this post, which explained how a typical concert contract works:
- Promoters get money from ticket sales. Sometimes there’s a guarantee, say $850,000, and if the promoter doesn’t make that amount, the venue, say the Alerus Center, would have to pay the difference. I still don’t know if the events center had to pay anything for the Britney Spears concert, but given that the promoters lowered the ticket numbers to 13,000 and the Alerus Center sold close to that amount, it’s very possible it didn’t have to pay anything.
- The artist gets money from novelty sales. Sometimes they have to hand over a percentage to the venue in exchange for being able to sell at the venue.
- The venue gets the rest: food and beverage, parking fees, facility fees.
So, not knowing the ancillary income or the cost of putting on the concert, which the Alerus Center would’ve had to pay for, it’s hard to say if the events center broke even or not.
(By the way, I suggested in this post that the cost of putting on the concert, say feeding the concert crew or buying advertising, could be in the $150,000 range. That was something an industry source threw out so it’s not necessarily SWAG.)
I bugged Steve about breaking even when I talked to him, but he got philosophical so I figured we’ll have wait until he actually has all his numbers. He said he probably wouldn’t have anything to tell the Alerus Center commission when it meets next Wednesday either.
I probably wouldn’t have written anything because it’s kind of silly to write a story in the absence of financial results, but I got pestered into doing it because today’s the first day Steve’s been back in town since the concert. So I didn’t meant to get anyone excited.
Wouldn’t way over six figures be like 120,000?
They’ve had plenty of time to let us know how much they lost. What are they really holding the results for?
Should it really take this long to go to vendors,get their receipt totals, and simply add them up? Hyman’s management team has a concessions manager, an event manager, business and operations managers, and I assume a bookkeeper or two. I’d be interested to see what the figure is that Hyman thinks is going to knock our socks off. Maybe the City can loan him a computer or adding machine so the reports can be a little more timely.
Ten days after the event and Hyman may not have data for the commission? Maybe Hyman should get some of those accountants that will be meeting next week at the Alerus to help tally up those ancillary revenues!
I’m not planning on buying any new socks next week.
And so it begins… now that it appears that the concert went well, and there’s the chance that *GASP* the Alerus actually made money, those who had been wailing and gnashing their teeth over the financial disaster about to befall our fair city begin to move the goalposts.
“Well, sure they may have broke even and made some money, but I’m still mad as hell- it took too long to add up the figures!”
Potentially good news from Britney concert? Is she coming back to do another show?
They have all the numbers, obviously. The work is now being done behind the scenes to cook the numbers for the public, just like they always have.
Spreadsheets are pretty easy to us now days. I wouldn’t bet on them cooking the numbers, though. They are just deceitful enough to wait for all their critics to speakout and then produce numbers to discredit them.
I actually went to the concert, more as enticement for future concerts than being any type of Britney fan. I know the Herald has presented figures from the economics professor that was surveying people at the concert; however, I gave them my name and email address and some of my friends did the same, yet we have never received an email to gauge how much money we spent that night, etc. I suppose he’s only speculating his economic impact number based on the apparent number of Canadians at the concert?
Also, I was disappointed in the way the concessions, etc. was ran. I don’t know why they didn’t do wristbands in a similar fashion to the Ralph. I didn’t drink much beer, along with other people I know, due to the fact there were lines for the beer since they had to card everyone. Also, it seems a little ridiculous to have three beer carts pushed together, but if you wanted two different brands, you had to go get in a different line. There was no cross selling, but maybe that was some agreement with the distributor. Overall, pretty poor service when the Alerus is counting on these sales to make the concert more profitable for the Alerus Center.
I worked in one of the concessions stands for the recent concert. We have to count our money before we check out for the night and, therefore, know our gross sales figure at the end of the evening. [FYI: I don't remember our exact figure, but it was $9K-$10K-gross sales]. I don’t know why the Alerus does not have a wrist band system in place. It would help us out, too. The lines were also slowed down by the requirement that we remove all bottle caps [required in Britney's contract]. EGF Mike might like to know that at the two beer windows at our stand [regular concession stand with food also, not just a free standing beer stand] you could get a number of different brands of beer-unfortunately our lines were also long. Sorry!