Advice for a Potential TO in a Rural Area

[Braffereborn]

So I'm not much of a player anymore, never was to be honest, but its sad to see the scene in my area continue to struggle to find a consistent TO/setting. As a result of Ironboots in Fargo [ND's Largest City] dying down and the Grand Forks Scene consistently struggling to have a venue I was wondering how much it would cost to get into TOing myself. As a background I've done promotions for small bands before, and find that if you are organizing your own shows you typically run loses for 2 to 3 months [at 2 events per month] before you finally start breaking even so I was wondering if the cost to payout ratio is similar in this sort of thing. As a result what I'm really asking is

1.) How much upfront capital do you need?
2.) How much promotion should you expect to have to pay before getting decent turnout?
3.) What is an acceptable take for the TO if any beyond recouping loses
4.) What is an acceptable venue fee/entry fee
5.) What is the minimum prize required to draw upper tier players from our nearest city [Minneapolis, 4 hour drive each way]
6.) What is the minimum computer requirements to realistically stream?
7.) What equipment is needed to do the streaming commentary and have enough setups?

I'm hoping that I can start building up an egg to do this right so we don't die out unlike the past 2 to 3 TOs in the area, who seem to do 1 or 2 events, lose their shirts and then never host again.

Also Moderators, if this is not the correct place for this post, just let me know and feel free to move it. I saw social threads here so I figured it would be appropriate.

 

[Basseidon]

I am from Mississippi and have helped organize smaller tournaments and help develop a structure for a state wide smash scene, so I am pretty familiar to the "rural" scene. But a lot really depends on what you define as rural, because a rural location may have difficulty securing a venue and finding participants. If its a small city with a gamestop, at the very least there is more potential. Maybe there is a small city in driving distance near you, that would help. Gamestops are often easy places to host a tournament for free. Just make friends with the employees / manager. Plus a GameStop shows that there is an audience of gamers around.

So I didn't really answer you questions but that was intentional. Start small, build a small scene. You don't need to put anything down you're not willing to lose. Maybe buy a small prize and have a free entry tournament to start. Keep hosting small tournaments until you can get better venue than Gamestop and start hosting more "official" tournaments. Churches can be a nice potentially free venue, even in rural areas. Also streaming is nice but it isn't a must. Just have fun, start a facebook group and build a community.

Maybe all that is already in place so this isn't very helpful. Sorry if that's the case.

 

[Braffereborn]

I am from Mississippi and have helped organize smaller tournaments and help develop a structure for a state wide smash scene, so I am pretty familiar to the "rural" scene. But a lot really depends on what you define as rural, because a rural location may have difficulty securing a venue and finding participants. If its a small city with a gamestop, at the very least there is more potential. Maybe there is a small city in driving distance near you, that would help. Gamestops are often easy places to host a tournament for free. Just make friends with the employees / manager. Plus a GameStop shows that there is an audience of gamers around.

So I didn't really answer you questions but that was intentional. Start small, build a small scene. You don't need to put anything down you're not willing to lose. Maybe buy a small prize and have a free entry tournament to start. Keep hosting small tournaments until you can get better venue than Gamestop and start hosting more "official" tournaments. Churches can be a nice potentially free venue, even in rural areas. Also streaming is nice but it isn't a must. Just have fun, start a facebook group and build a community.

Maybe all that is already in place so this isn't very helpful. Sorry if that's the case.

I was looking at doing a series of professional level tournaments, because of my background with concerts and just general organizing.

To clarify I'm originally from the East Coast, so rural to me is 100 square miles and about 60,000 people in the area [that generally means 30,000-40,000 adults within a 30 minute drive, which is usually enough for a scene. With that being said, there are some problems with the whole "small scene" model. The first is that it never tends to grow until you put up the capital, which means you need to know capital requirements anyway for the future. The second is, it usually ends up being written off, and relies on one or two dedicated players dying out immediately after they move on. This is very similar to the reason scene kids die out in music when you are in high school. Once the kids who are doing all the work and hosting it at their houses move on, you basically see the scene collapse for 2 to 3 years, until a point at which someone else attempts to resurrect the scene, but you never go beyond 5-10 people.

This is where my experience in music promotion comes into play, we knew exactly how much it was going to cost us to do small local venues for three months, and took the risk, and we were able to keep it going for about 2-3 years. It finally ended when three of the mainstay bands broke up, and one made it big enough to tour up and down the east coast continuously for a living and the next generation wasn't willing or able to step up, but even to this day there are still events at the old venues, just not at the same size.

Edits: To know what your willing to lose you have to know the costs, its better to do nothing than go in half cocked, thats how you get disasters like Fyre Festival, or the first Battle of the Bands I hosted at a local high school, because something half done creates a negative experience that is not easily forgotten.